‘Autumn Haunts’: A Poem by Cynthia Erlandson

Autumn Haunts

The black eyes are all that remains of the black-eyed susans;
The cricket choir has thinned from thousands to dozens.
Late-bloomers are curling and dropping, concluding their seasons
Under color-drenched clouds. Day’s last blinding beam emblazons
The shade-heavy early evening’s breathtaking horizons,
Painting a veil of deep purples and darkening crimsons.
Melancholy—evoked by the flowers’ vanished brilliance
And lost hours of light—overwhelms us with its invasions
Of unwanted remembrances haunting us with their intense
Insistence on rising once more, leaving us with sensations
That conflict with the cool, scented air’s exuberance.

Sunflowers turn fragile, their long necks bowed over like martyrs.
Behind the short-circuited lamp that they mirror, blurred borders
Of daylight and twilight abridge the late afternoon’s order,
Diminishing sunlight by minutes—each day slightly shorter.
Grounded brown leaves are releasing their annual fragrance,
While maples’ bejeweled effusions arouse sentiments
Undefined: expectation combining with discontents;
Loss coexisting with dancing exhilarations.
Above, the fast-darkening firmament’s circling legions
Continue their constant recurring, predestined missions,
As if taking the credit for causing our contrary passions.

The ashes of dearly-departed late summer’s cremations
Are scattered: burnt leaves mixed with withering, arid oblations
Of once-fragrant flora, lie unburied. Insects’ vibrations
Grow quieter, slower, their warm concert’s cool culmination.
Above the precipitous sunset’s intense conflagrations,
The blurry moon rises, begins its severe excavations
Of memory’s mysteries; unearths our half-hidden emotions
Dreaded though nebulous; disinters shadowed allusions
To old fears; conjures nightmares, awaking forgotten occasions.
Desire overlaps with distress. Restless souls’ intersections
With the cryptic, inexorable forces of lunar gloom
Thwart any escape from this unnerving, ghostly bloom.

Cynthia Erlandson is a poet and fitness professional living in Michigan.  Her third collection of poems, Foundations of the Cross and Other Bible Stories, was released in July, 2024 by Wipf and Stock Publishers.  Her other collections are These Holy Mysteries and Notes on Time.  Her poems have also appeared in First Things, Modern Age, The North American Anglican, The Orchards Poetry Review, The Book of Common Praise hymnal, The Catholic Poetry Room, and elsewhere.