Early Autumn Poem by Elizabeth Jordan Heinbuch

Early autumn arrived
with fresh frost and grey skies
the arid air,
absent and dry.
Though a slow bellowing blow
brushes through bulimic trees
decapitated and diseased
as we shuffle sadly below.
Beautiful brown and bronze collect
in lovely dead leaf decadence
Martyred in malnourishment
Given to their graves.
Sun sneaking away to hide
over the hills she sleeps behind
where daylight retires
and darkness comes alive
In the distant horizon-
Is where we die.
Our breath blows like bleach on the breeze
and our bloodfilled fingers begin to freeze
We swallow them with our sleeves
Walking silently down the empty street.
In some small sanctuary
An age-old cemetary
The cold cathedral
with it's closed arms and doors
and we're looking past it
for so much more.
The surface of the soil is drown
Puddles lay frozen like cracked glass on the ground
we shatter them with our shoes
looking down towards our toes
in this garden of graveyard tombs.
Buried in their barrows
the bodies in black beds
Doctors made them hollow
Artists made them pretty again.
Only in words did they ever live
no longer in memory
nor heirloom to give
Only on a cement stone
An address you reluctantly call home
and no one comes over you're all alone
What is it like to be forgotten.
There's a statue
where a mortar mother cried
for her child who shouldnt have died
and she whispering in solemn pray
'Til day break and shadows flee away'
Here we talked of history
and painful past memory
Sharing secrets and shedding scars
Sleeping uncomfortably
on the hood of your car
looking up at the stars
Where you stole my heart...