Autumn Imagined

The shuffle and shudder of Autumn

Are in our love.

Those last thin garments, come

Let's have them off!

Drop them about your knees.

The beech-tree rains its gold.

We are deciduous trees,

And our year grows old.

We cannot procrastinate.

Although we seem to delay

By having children late,

Our Autumn is today.

Indeed, give my body its due,

It read the signs aright

When it trembled at Autumn's hue

On our wedding night.

HOT HANDS

"Warm hands, cold heart," they say; and vice-versa.

My hands are so hot always

That when they touch your coolness, they immerse

Hissingly, charred and ablaze.

Folk-wisdom! For such old wives' cynical tales

If natural law is thwarted,