October Simon Cockle

October

October starts with nothing; a monstrous blank With tentacles at September’s throat. It keeps the heat of summer for a week, Then holds it tight in tourmaline and opal, Before exhaling into fingerless gloves. It is a flag of revolution, planted in bonfire mounds of leaves, of spent feathers. It is calendula, the bad tooth’s friend. But it ends with a trick or an unearned treat And a witch’s hat and broom, or, at least, A cheap box of noise and sparkle to cheer Up a subfusc night. And, in the end, a month’s just a moon’s return trip, a calendar of tally sticks, chalk marks, false starts.

Simon Cockle