Flips

Fall is upside down,
like humanity these days—
maples partly rust red, more like oaks but mostly still green,
and the oaks, usually the last to color, are the first,
mummified in dull brown.

What season has not turned to another ghost of our expectations?
But grief is a petty and self-deceiving bauble:
a fine-knapped obsidian scalpel—
light and texture to lure the touch of hands,
an edge to make the touch a gesture of remembering.

Richard Fenton Sederstrom was raised and lives in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona and the North Woods of Minnesota. Sederstrom is the author of eight books of poetry, his latest book, The Dun Book, published by Jackpine Writers' Bloc, was released last fall. Read other articles by Richard Fenton.