Hi Paul:

Greetings from Manhattan. Despite the abundant harvest and brilliant foliage, autumn in our mid-Atlantic region is, for me, a sad reflective time, with its own somber music.  Here is the poem, “October Rosebush,” from my 2008 collection, Father of Water.

Best wishes,
Charles Pierre

Paul Goldfinger ©. Churchyard. France. Last rose.

October Rosebush

By Charles Pierre

In the absence of flowers, with only branches and thorns,
it stands austerely, swaying from side to side in the wind,
after the bright show of summer has faded, and the last
sap has dried in the stems, swaying like a metronome,
keeping the time of autumn’s quiet song, the withered
blossoms fallen, weightless and shapeless, tumbling
haphazardly along the garden’s littered ground.

In the commotion of turning foliage, there is a brief
echo of the once-vivid red, and even in the piles
of curled leaves a note of the lush inward fold of petals–
but nowhere in the air is there any strain of its fragrance,
the sweet unmistakable scent, that lyrical bouquet
released into the small space surrounding each flower,
where a face once danced in circles to the music of summer.

EVA CASSIDY (live):