A Sweating Vision
September arrives late for class sweaty, her fresh
face caked with beginnings and sunflower pollen.
She wears knockout, blue sky, summer dresses,
each dress minorly more autumn as she ages by degrees.
Moving too fast, too slow, you miss her;
realising she's gone before you're done woolgathering for her sweater.
Charles, for his part, is resplendent: he glows with drunken
smiles in ripples of sapphire, cobalt and ultramarine.
He basks under rowboats and sailboats, pleasure
cruisers and tugs, not concerned with the continuing swelter
when his banks are trimmed and cleared and carefully
attended. The sun starts the descent toward those
lonely nine-hour days which temper the wilt and
burn. I'm not sure if September and Charles ever
notice one another, so focused are they on their own recitals.
Sarah Shapiro’s chapbooks the bullshit cosmos (ignitionpress 2019) and being called normal (tall-lighthouse press 2021) work to bridge the gap between those who struggle to read and those who read with ease. You can find her on Twitter here: @shapi20s and on her website here: www.sarahashapiro.com.