The Autumn People

 

Below, the poem

The Autumn People. 

 

Cover of The Autumn People by Ray Bradbury

It will be in a new book,

The Next World,

coming out from Shanti Arts Publishing

in January 2025.

It is a “persona” poem.

Meaning: a poem written in an assumed voice, a character. 

This character experiences the world in a slightly hallucinatory 

way, or maybe they see things as they really are…

 

Beirut

 

And so....

The Autumn People

1.

 

I catch the orange glow of their cigarettes out beyond

the tracks in late Fall: all those we’ve killed in so many

 

of our wars, those caught in our furious crossfire, our

vicious metallic arguments with ourselves. I hear them

 

pad down to the river at night with zinc buckets to get

water for coffee, to keep them awake, vigilant. They

 

may be dead but they are still wary of us. Each footfall

is soft as the shift of a fin below the river’s surface.

 

2.

 

They have been gathering their forces, waiting patiently

until they have enough mass to rush the city, shut down

 

the grid, the water, stop traffic, grind the tired economy

to a halt, eliminate sleep. (Maybe it’s already happened:

 

Insomnia has built a strong following here.) Sometimes

they steal into the city in twos and threes, rummage

 

recycling bins, clink glass jars together to find the perfect

sound that will bring all the walls and bridges down.

 

3.

 

They have a saying they pass on to the newly dead in their

camps. I hear it lying awake at night: everything is happening

 

at once. I can feel it’s truth. Everything is happening at once.

There are moments when I believe they have already stormed

 

the city, that it’s already over. Last night on my rounds I passed

a body sleeping (or dead) beneath a thin blanket. The wind

 

lifted the frayed corner. I saw a hand, relaxed. Me, I welcome

the invasion, a revelation of secrets the dead will reveal.

 

4.

 

This morning, impatient, I went out to them, crossed the tracks,

waded through high grass, into the line of trees beside the river,

 

to tell them that it’s time, everything’s cracking and breaking

apart of its own accord, and it may only take a breath, a whisper,

 

a nudge, to shut everything down, start anew. On a mud bank,

I found two men, talking over each other, full of rapid-fire

 

meth-inspired words, focused on how to fix a bike so they

could sell it, the fantastic things they would do with the cash…

  

(The Autumn People was previously published in Cholla Needles)

 

 

 ***************************************************

 

I wrote The Autumn People in the fall of 2022,

addressing the horror and shame arising 

from decades of looking into the abyss created 

by of one of the main US exports to the world:

violence via weapons manufacturing.

 

More about US Weapons and Consequences (Death Tolls) in a

 previous blog, found here. 

 

 

 

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