Photography © Julianne Powers

 

Heavy Coats

Love for autumn is so fitting
for a kind with such fascination over death.
Many consider the season majestic,
relish in the colors
and reap the harvests.
Commemorating it with the celebration
of disguising ourselves as who we’re not,
or who we wish we could be,
instead of genuinely
honoring the dead.

The annual dawn
of stalking, trapping, and killing begins
despite how much of the wild we’ve already taken.
So hard to live with
like the sickening mold that accompanies this foreboding shift.
Living with soaking wet cuffs and feet,
freezing rain, piercing glares, and pounding sleet.
Each day becoming darker
as we get deeper into the wretched,
inescapable cold.
Trapped in the confines of heavy coats.

As death settles in,
the outlook for many months to come is clearly desolate.
Summer’s a truly sweet distraction
from the crippling, grueling,
shovel-out-to-survive, risk-your-life-to-drive hell.
Have never missed those bleak, powerless nights isolated in silence.
Now comes the time of yearning
for the sun’s welcoming warm spirit.
This quarter marks the end
of the fleeting days of comfort
away from that painful shivering.

Trails of tears
from generational mourning and dread
add to this treacherous torment.
All the dearly beloved I once had
each gave up their ghost
in the dark hollows of Fall.

Numb from the biting air,
succumbing
to snowballing misery.
Those that embrace the growing night
rejoice in giving up the fight
and the weight of that utterly frightening.

 

Julianne Powers is artist, poet, and writer from South Shore Massachusetts. Julianne has studied classical guitar and herbalism, and she enjoys photography, crafts, and gardening.