J.C. Elkin Verse-Virtual 2016 November

November 2016

I am an optimist, linguist, singer and M.F.A. candidate at Bennington College. My collection World Class: Poems Inspired by the ESL Classroom is based on my experiences teaching English to adult immigrants. Other works drawing on spirituality, feminism, travel, and childhood appear domestically and abroad in such journals as The Delmarva Review, Kestrel, and Angle. For more information, please visit my website, www.jcelkin.net .

Mother Nature’s Last Fling

November’s flush of claret-rosy cheeks
is Mother Nature’s final lusty fling
before she lets her roots go dry and white
for three bleak months of solitary sleep.

Adorned in cranberry, persimmon, beet,
she flaunts her ripened femininity
and kisses with blood orange-tinted lips
the thinning shrubs and trees of Autumn’s rest.

She hangs her flaming paper party lamps
so maple embers glow at evening’s end
when banked in cozy mounds of ashen grey
to melt the fog of day’s reluctant dawn.

And pilgrims flock to her like cardinals,
impatient for the berries that she brings
to nourish them through winter’s abstinence
with incandescent memories in hand.

first appeared in Third Wednesday

Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to tell him or her. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is the beginning of community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -FF