October 2021
Bio Note: Lately I've been writing in a 'form' I call 10 x 10's, in which I keep strictly to 10 lines of 10 syllables each. No other formal limits apply (though I may impose other "prompts," poem by poem, such as using particular words), so every poem is different syntactically and rhythmically. It has stretched me quite a bit, I suppose like how writing sonnets stretches sonneteers. I've arrived at poems I never would have otherwise created. This fall-ish poem is an examples of that and appears in my new collection Mobius Trip due out from Dos Madres Press, maybe by now, in fact, or at any rate by the end of the year.
Autumn in the Wings
Twigs’ lush medium is converting to calligraphy, the dismissal of leaves to launch its winter forewarning. Laden with late acorns, squirrels chuck-chuck meaningless memos, counter-balance full bellies, tails unfurled. I am embracing—keepsaking— the unscrolling calendar, harvesting days tossed my way, the prodigious burden of nows. Hunters will bruise this calm soon, but until then it’s choirs of jays, cranes, and crows.
Originally published in Front Porch Review
©2021 D. R. James
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