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In Autumn

Mark Irwin

When within ourselves in autumn we feel the autumn

I become very still, a kind of singing, and try to move

like all things green, in one direction, when within ourselves

the autumn moves, thickening like honey, that light we smear

on faces and hands, then touch the far within one another,

something like autumn, and I think when those who knew

the dead, when they fall asleep, then what, then what in autumn

when I always feel I’m writing in red pencil on a piece

of paper growing in thickness the way a pumpkin does,

traveling at fantastic speed toward orange, toward rot, when

in autumn I remember that we are cold-smitten as I continue

smearing red on this precipice, this ledge of paper over which

I lean, trying to touch those I love, their bodies rusting

as I keep writing, sketching their red hands, faces lusting for green.

Mark Irwin is the author of A Passion According to Green (New Issues Poetry & Prose, 2017). He lives in Colorado and Los Angeles.

About Mark Irwin

Themes

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Beginning

About this Poem

“What’s terrifying about autumn is not so much the end of things, but that there’s a hidden beginning in some middle you can’t yet see but feel, the way one feels the earth move when a bulldozer tears down a building while the world turns red and yellow.”

—Mark Irwin

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More by this poet

My Father’s Hats

   Sunday mornings I would reach
high into his dark closet while standing
   on a chair and tiptoeing reach
higher, touching, sometimes fumbling
   the soft crowns and imagine
I was in a forest, wind hymning
   through pines, where the musky scent
of rain clinging to damp earth was
   his scent I loved, lingering on
bands, leather, and on the inner silk
   crowns where I would smell his
hair and almost think I was being
   held, or climbing a tree, touching
the yellow fruit, leaves whose scent
   was that of a clove in the godsome
air, as now, thinking of his fabulous
   sleep, I stand o

Mark Irwin

2004

Nike of Samothrace

—Her fish scales, her chains, the woman’s headless
wings and blown

tunic of Parian marble. —The wet-see-thru
camisole. By sea she’s

Mark Irwin

2022

Voyage

When we could no longer walk or explore, we decided to wear

the maps and would sit talking, pointing to places, sometimes

touching mountains, canyons, deserts on each other’s body,

and that was how we fell in love again, sitting next to

each other in the home that was not our home, writing letters

with crooked words, crooked lines we handed back and forth,

the huge hours and spaces between us growing smaller and smaller.

Mark Irwin

2017

Poems

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In Autumn

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