When autumn’s vapors
settled on the valley,
the mottled shades
of leaves thrashed like a sea,
such windblown trash-heaps
tossed in ragged waves;
while some went twisting,
others sped along,
still others, hapless,
leaped all different ways
to meet a dizzy child
half a step ahead,
the rally of them
scattered in my frolic.
Today, fogbound,
November once again,
a gray mosaic of the clouds
roofs over me.
Low weather scrubs
the colors where I walk
caught in the folly
of my boyish capers.
Yet looking back,
blood murmurs round my limbs;
I lumber through
this waste of autumn’s leaving,
which decays so brightly
in my solemn thoughts.
Will Cordeiro has work published in AGNI, Bennington Review, Copper Nickel, The Threepenny Review, THRUSH, and elsewhere. Will won the 2019 Able Muse Book Award for Trap Street. Will coedits Eggtooth Editions and teaches in the Honors College at Northern Arizona University.