Says the man who never had
A thing to say about September

First days of school
Spent in heat only an
August could love

Staring out at wilting green
Waiting for the earth to turn
Its colors over to October

Listening to the whine of
The last cicadas and teachers
Who called English Language Arts

Using the dreaded term “homework”
Then ladling it out in bucketsful
So the late summer evening was always lost

Hurricanes blew in September and I ruined
More shoes than my mother cared to count;
More souls than I cared to remember

Older then, we drank from quart bottles
Behind a sunglass factory in Queens
And I kissed a girl there on a loading dock

Discovered I could kiss and felt that shimmer
Of a future in which all the simple joys
Would vanish in the labyrinth of love.

Went into it anyway, with eyes wide open
Daring the maelstrom that the pop songs
Told me was its inevitable consequence

The weather as fickle as the girls;
My heart an unnamed hurricane;
My broken soul its ragged aftermath.

Waiting for October to embrace me,
To save me, to put distance between
September and a young man’s wild heart.

09/04/2014

Posted on 09/04/2014
Copyright © 2025 Ken Harnisch