October Elegy


After the burial she walked with me,
Where tall trees, standing in a clear
Sunlight, cast strict shadows across
The drive – a woman just past fifty,
Elegant and gracious, lovely to see.

“You came all the way from Maine, they say.
You must have been very fond of Kurt,”
Meaning her brother, my uncle by marriage,
               and that was true.

A far hill seemed the reds and golds
Of an old tapestry kicked against
The horizon, while the branches near
At hand were clad in tatters, and one
Old oak in rags of penny-brown.

“You were just a boy when I left home.”

That, too, was true, and true still,
The infatuation a boy once felt
For her – though now as mellow as
A bronze medallion smoothed by the wear
               of a quarter century.

She took my arm, her white-gloved hand
Around my sleeve, and we walked awhile
In silence.  Her step was steady, stately,
Despite the cant of her narrow heels
On the cinder drive.  And leaving the drive
We crossed a quilt of yellow leaves,
Dimly reflected in the branches
Overhead, and I was made
Momentarily giddy by
               the lightness of its color.

And as we joined the others, she let
Go of my arm, saying, “I must
See Joan before I leave,” meaning
My aunt, her sister-in-law, and smiling
A smile of October charm she left me.

All that was eighteen years ago,
And now I am her age then, and now
I do not think that I shall ever
See her again, and that, I allow,
Is as it should be, now as the reds
And golds of old tapestry
Return, once more, to distant hills –
               the same but not the same.



* Larry Kimmel is a US poet of both
haikai and mainline forms. His most recent books are this hunger, tissue-thing and Blue Night & the inadequacy of
long-stemmed roses. (Modern English Tanka Press).