ManicDDaily

Poem in my October

The apple trees, they radiate green light,
though the day itself is grey and all else brown,
and green they still will shine as day turns night

if you stand below their boughs, your own eyes bright,
if slips of smiles, like leaves, spin darkness round,
the apple trees, they’ll radiate green light.

But if, like me, you hold your head skin-tight,
a fruit that is all pit, its flesh all stone,
then green will find you still, as day turns night,

unripened, offering only bark to bite,
rind-footed through the autumn fields that ground
the apple trees they radiate.  “Green light,”

says every fear we face–if we look right
at it–for when these leaves will fall, they’ll make no sound,
even though their green now shines as day turns night

and they swim wind’s sea like fish with all their might
heedless of how they’re hooked from stem to mouth–
the apple trees, they radiate green light,
a green that steels all shine as day turns night.

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Here’s a draft villanelle for Margaret Bednar’s Play It Again Sam prompt on With Real Toads, which recycles older prompts.  The specific prompt that inspired this poem was Kerry O’Connor’s wonderful essay on Dylan Thomas (and particularly on his poem “Poem in October.” )  Thomas would be 100 years old today. 

I’m not so sure about the last line, the entire last stanza–or the others either, come to think of it–but am facing a  jammed day so wanted to get this up before I lost track of Thomas’s birthday and all other poetic enterprises.   I also would frankly prefer the title “Poem in October,” but feel strange taking Thomas’s title!  (Though it is a bit generic)