Windward Review Vol. 20 (2022): Beginnings and Endings

Steve Brisendine
The Green Man in Autumn
This metaphor business
starts to wear on a fellow
some nights.
My joints are all stiff,
creaking like old-growth oak
in a strong wind,
and my hair has gone brittle,
crackling with a sound
that never fails to remind
of that first kiss, soft
yet ravenous, of flame
against stubble.
Come three in the morning,
I can feel my eyelids
freezing shut.
There is, I must confess,
a sweet familiar rhythm
to the slow onset of these
brown days, the first turns
of chill earth.
My cheeks glow, even as
they draw and wither, and
there are those to whom
I look best in red and gold.
Still, it is no easy thing
to turn my back – weary,
wind-bent, gnarled as
it might be,
upon a world of ripened fields,
laden vines, lovers sharing
orchard-fruit...
No matter. My bed of earth
calls; whether I will or no,
I cannot but answer and
draw close my coverlet of
frost-tinged leaves.
I will dream of cracking
river-ice, a first shy opening
of peony buds,
the scent of bread on the final
morning of my next life.
Beginnings X Endings
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