Change of Season by Anne Champion
Today, Summer kicked us in our faces,
heaving backwards off our bodies
as if we were a ledge, plummeted
into the ocean and backstroked
to lay her slippery hand on others
in far away places.
Only yesterday, we were a feast
of flaunted flesh, each body
a shiny bronzed coin. From the sky,
we were all glint and luster,
bustling joy. But today,
we are crippled matchsticks, marching
under sagging umbrellas, raincoats,
and ponchos, trudging
with robotic stoicism.
It’s a new season and I am stuck
in the cold in short sleeves,
and I think
I may need to discuss this
with my therapist,
I need a tropical locale, permanent
happiness, as if sunshine could give
that much. It’s true, change stuns
me every time, leaves me paralyzed--
I feel the same way about Summer’s abandonment
as I felt last winter about my lover’s other woman:
I cannot say Summer then Fall,
just as I could not say love then alone.
I continued to answer the phone,
to take him in my bed,
not noticing when Summer arrived, laid
her hand on my cheek, plunged her hot fist
in my hollow chest wound and said Thaw, child,
Let me see you smile.
Summer has left us now, as people do,
but we had her for a while.
Anne Champion is the author of Reluctant Mistress, a poetry collection released by Gold Wake Press in 2013. Her work appears in Verse Daily, The Pinch, Cider Press Review, PANK Magazine, The Comstock Review, Poetry Quarterly, Line Zero, Thrush Poetry Journal and elsewhere. She was a 2009 Academy of American Poets Prize recipient, a Pushcart Prize nominee and a St. Botolph Emerging Writer Grant nominee. http://anne-champion.com
Today, Summer kicked us in our faces,
heaving backwards off our bodies
as if we were a ledge, plummeted
into the ocean and backstroked
to lay her slippery hand on others
in far away places.
Only yesterday, we were a feast
of flaunted flesh, each body
a shiny bronzed coin. From the sky,
we were all glint and luster,
bustling joy. But today,
we are crippled matchsticks, marching
under sagging umbrellas, raincoats,
and ponchos, trudging
with robotic stoicism.
It’s a new season and I am stuck
in the cold in short sleeves,
and I think
I may need to discuss this
with my therapist,
I need a tropical locale, permanent
happiness, as if sunshine could give
that much. It’s true, change stuns
me every time, leaves me paralyzed--
I feel the same way about Summer’s abandonment
as I felt last winter about my lover’s other woman:
I cannot say Summer then Fall,
just as I could not say love then alone.
I continued to answer the phone,
to take him in my bed,
not noticing when Summer arrived, laid
her hand on my cheek, plunged her hot fist
in my hollow chest wound and said Thaw, child,
Let me see you smile.
Summer has left us now, as people do,
but we had her for a while.
Anne Champion is the author of Reluctant Mistress, a poetry collection released by Gold Wake Press in 2013. Her work appears in Verse Daily, The Pinch, Cider Press Review, PANK Magazine, The Comstock Review, Poetry Quarterly, Line Zero, Thrush Poetry Journal and elsewhere. She was a 2009 Academy of American Poets Prize recipient, a Pushcart Prize nominee and a St. Botolph Emerging Writer Grant nominee. http://anne-champion.com
