Cusp
Paul Fisher Paul Fisher
Waiting for October's smile to disappear, we stock the porch with half a cord of easy pine and hard-earned cherry wood. While evening hums, we search rough-barked sky for fire, ask the last wide V of geese to veer off course, to spend the thin blue light of winter wilding in our dreams. By morning pent-up rains fall, clearing cluttered acres for November's bone-white owl. We say goodbye to copper moons, borrowed hours, gnarled suns, turn to face the dark we fear now inching night across bare floor, despite logs split and sleeping, a brace of wolf-dogs knotted by the door.
TCE: What 5 words register on your cliché meter when writing about October? What 1 word would you love to see show up in an October poem? Paul Fisher: I'm not sure that any single word can be a cliché on its own. To me, clichés are tired and overused combinations of words. I think any word can take on new life in a fresh context.
Read more about Paul in this Autumn section (pg 79; interview start, pg 78; essay, pg 75).
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