"Autumn Burns" by Ross Balcom

Autumn Burns

1.

Autumn burns.

"Autumn" Watercolor on Paper
By J. Artemus Gordon

With flames of red, yellow, 

and orange, it burns.

I set ablaze

a pile of autumn leaves,

and threw myself

on the flames.

2.

My charred tongue spoke

from the ashes,

spoke to my children,

my people, the world:

"May you burn,

may you all burn."

3.

Our ashes

flow like a river

among the stars,

the stars far and cold,

the stars

silently screaming.

4.

Autumn burns,

autumn burns,

autumn burns.

--Ross Balcom

Poet's Notes: This poem began as a celebration of autumn and its colors but quickly became a psychedelic death trip.

Editor’s Note:  I read a bit more into this poem, seeing a combination of the sublime and the macabre with the apocalyptic.  For me, the brilliant leaf-fall colors are a metaphor for a future in which autumn literally as well as figuratively burns--in which earth “falls," as will happen when our sun changes from small and yellow to gigantic and red--sooner if the climate change crowd is correct.  I also read "tongue" in part 2 as "tongue of flame."  Sometimes a tongue is just a tongue.