Unseasonable Weather

This day should be blinkingly, breathtakingly hot
an afternoon filled with shimmery distances
spreading flowers and barely swaying grass.
Skins should be heated with light
and contentment sighed between sips of cold sweet tea.

Bright pools should be filled with children splashing
under an unbearably constant sun
and the evening should be off dancing somewhere
far away, languorous, unconcerned.

Instead, the sky is a blustery painted ceiling
earnest swirls of weird and graying blues pushing
a false season to earth, forcing it unnaturally
from stolen threads of chill wind
and hasty tendrils of woodsmoke rising.

Today, the wily ghost of October announced
the airing out of her winter blankets.
And July, in his naiveté, and I, in my longing,
have fallen for her ruse.

Tricked by her witchy winds
lured by remembrances of other Autumns
we have wandered away, July and I,
enchanted, without names
to live beyond the archways of the year…

under a first quiet snow,
before the needful fire,
in the shadows of an early falling dark.

Perhaps we will return on another unseasonable day
when true North dissolves
into the uncompassed center of time
and a woman’s unruly desire for a season out of sync
turns the winds once more.

Photo credit: laffy4k at flickr