Poem: September 19, 2019

Dissonance

Mid-September and it's still too warm
to spend any time outside, kicking
leaves or resting feet up by the fire,
but we have lit the autumn candles,
so pumpkin spice, apple, cinnamon
fill the living room and kitchen, and
chili and tomato soup are on the menu
again, even if the trees are August-
green and the daisies grow thick in
the back garden. I pass my denim
jacket, hanging on the hook since
April, and shake my head and try to
squint away the dissonance, this
collective self-hypnosis, this legacy
delusion, born from a remembered
climate or clever marketing or our
modern impatience. We feel it, I know.
We feel the harvest coming like a
flirtation. We smell the feast on
the wind. We race to close the distance
between ourselves and a lover we
remember as colorful and exotic,
someone to wrap around ourselves.
We force ourselves to imagine the joy
of fall is already at the door, and we
close the pools and hang the red
and orange decorations, even though
it is still 85 degrees and mostly sunny,
because we have forgotten how to wait.