# Autumn Interrupts

Author: Rob MacWolf
Tags: Horror, Limerick, Poetry, sonnet

#24 of poetry

This one is pretty old. I just remember I wrote it because someone, I forget who, said that the Limerick as a form was necessarily a joke and couldn't be made scary.

It's easy to forget what autumn means  
In tired lands of sun-stuffed tedium;  
Assassin breeze the blackfly never weans,  
The forecast is extremely medium.  
It's easy to forget those ragged skies  
Crushed, throttled, splintered by the frigid light  
That setting, cold to scent and warm to eyes,  
Lets slip the wind and stirs dead leaves to flight.  
And so-

-I went out walking in the night  
That was not born yet. All the trees were white.  
The roofs above  
My head were bare.  
There was no color  
Anywhere  
Save only in  
The twisting air  
Where summer's ghost was bright.

There was a narrow alley on my way  
And there I met a man who bid me stay.  
I saw his blood  
and bones interred.  
I passed both by  
without a word.  
Ahead of me  
his footsteps heard  
A thousand miles away.

Each homeward path I desperate turned my face  
He stood before me, and in every place-

_"The street-dust is dragging like lace_  
_On some dark tangled edge of this place._  
_My gut is a stone._  
_The night is alone._  
_Come morning, they won't find a trace."_

-He told me I  
would die alone  
And never call  
my life my own.  
_"Remember me"_  
And he was gone  
I ran. Nothing gave chase.

I left the twisting shadow streets behind.  
I went to wash the fingers from my mind.  
And so-

-whatever phantom forms may wind  
Out of the cooling earth to hang in air  
With leaf-ghosts dangle from the thin moon rind.  
Some see them and move on. Some are still there.  
The inmost heart of autumn, hardened still,  
I wanted to forget. I never will.

Source: https://sofurry.com/s/pnGaZMey
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