This Gentle Harvest

The Echo of What Remains Collected Poems of Wanda Lea Brayton

                — Inspired by Edna St. Vincent Millay's sonnet "I know I am but summer to your heart"

I shall be the mere brilliance of autumn

swirling within your eyes,

leaves drifting on more fragile winds

than we may endure with grace.

Humility be mine own,

as I hold out a trembling hand for you to grasp;

we will find succor from this gentle harvest.

Winter will shield us from its frigid breath

as we burrow beneath blankets we have woven

from tears once shed in futility

and echoes of remembered laughter gone before. 

There will be comforting silences to soothe

the noises of a busy world; we shall lay upon them,

our spirits seeping into each other 

to keep us dry within the flood,

to sustain us through a bitter drought.

Should one of us go too soon ahead, toward that final home,

reminiscences will retain their finery and fervor;

there will be no sorrow to enrapture our shuddering hearts. 

Plums shall again ripen beneath warm breath

as snow flies under the wooden sill where once we stood,

together, alone in our solitude,

yet, never in dismay.