By B.A. Van Sise
She wants, most of all, for it to look
cute: something that strangers can
see to know that no woman is doing
autumn better: sweater weather, sure,
but also flannel shirts, flirty jeans that
lift her seat, amber scarves and hordes
of gourds stretching to the horizon,
each plump and perfect, including
the one in her arms. She is
not so much a woman
as a mood board with legs: her
dream job is picking apples in
1940: riding in the back of a pick
up truck from farm to farm, sleeping
in barns with bulky boys whose
thick beards tickle. Trickles of cold
rain rollicking over the roof. But
instead an amateur morning
in the orchard awaits, made
later and later by the line for
coffee spiced with clove, nutmeg,
cinnamon bark, everything once
unloaded off sloops from Jakarta
but the history. And then? There’s
no mystery to it: sleep in heatless
houses with stone hearths, listen
to sad music to meddle with
her merriest mood, breathe
in the season, store memories
like acorns. Hold tight to
here and now, and forget, for
a moment, how winter comes
on tiny feet, the crunch of
leaves the only thing to
quelch the quietus of silent snow.
About the Author:
B.A. Van Sise is an author and photographic artist with three monographs: the visual poetry anthology Children of Grass with Mary-Louise Parker, Invited to Life with Mayim Bialik, and On the National Language with DeLanna Studi. He is a two-time winner of the Independent Publisher Book Awards gold medal, a two-time Prix de la Photographie Paris winner, an Anthem Award winner, a finalist for the Rattle and Kenyon Poetry Prizes, and a winner of the INDIES Book of the Year and Lascaux Prize for Nonfiction.