On that crisp green grass at the park, in the infancy of September,
we sat as our own little plain, enough to contain only us, stretched infinitely,
encroaching not on the multitude who had gathered in their own worlds
but, rather, the eternity of that moment: brushed hands, resting heads, trembling sighs.
And I still remember the gold that filtered through the mahogany of your hair,
blinding me if I looked directly at it. But I don’t recall if that was the sun.
Summer was too long a visitor for us both. 

Here in this pea-soup fog, in this cats-and-dogs rain,
I know that plain is drenched and no more the crisp surety of late summer.
I am lost in the fog just as that memory is obscured by idyllic memory.
But you are just as clear now, layered in your autumnal secrets, 
as you were then, vivid and pure (as your second name suggests).

I am afraid of the changing seasons.
I am afraid to bare my soul in the looming cold.
And—by God—I do not know if it is love
or just a misinterpretation
of two bodies in the rain. 

(October 15 for September 20, 2012)