Clutched in the utterly solar caress
of this endless embrace, you saw yourself.
In everyone you greeted or benignly ignored
you saw the same unending birth of light
die on daylight savings time. You saw
the steps you'd have to take to move
from momentariness back into eternity.
You wandered into this dwindling October,
where you've dwelled for ages. Eternity
and maternity share more than earth-
churning cycles; both turn on the moment
just ended. Each spins on the moment just begun.
Never out of step, advancing Pied Piper style,
her slowing march on winter made a rat out of you.
Almost over now, October spread herself
across the landscape, cocksure of getting over.
As warming to the eye as to your touch, October,
moreover, no stranger to the flash and shimmer
of gold and burnt sienna, red and sunburst
green, October reminded. "Time may have
a stop," she said, "but life does not. Life goes."
And at her gung-ho go-away party, you hoisted
your glass: "To moist October, quencher of flame."
Written by Al Young
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