An Experiment in Collaboration

First of all, I missed a week. Shame on me. So this is either last Sunday's post six days late, or this Sunday's post one day early. We'll see how tomorrow plays out.

This post is the initial step towards a collaborative poem between Rbannal and myself. It's an exercise in cops and robbers. Mostly robbers. I've stolen a line Rbannal's "love song for the end of summer" and inserted it into my own poem. Presumably, he will then follow this by stealing (a different) line from my poem. I'll then snag a couplet from that poem, and so on and so forth until the poems progressively more intertwined. The end result should be an nifty sequence, beginning with "love song for the end of summer" and ending god knows where.

Find poem #1 in the sequence at: permanentstrangerladyhand.blogspot.com.

Here's my "reply," or poem #2 in the sequence. Rbannal's line is italicized.

Morning in Late September

Driving East on Huron,

I catch the end of the sunrise

orange, gold rays linger

just minutes as the sun drifts

deep into the overcast sky.

It won’t be long now

before I’ll only see

the tender halo of light

creeping along the horizon,

breaking the dawn.

Gray hours claim more

of each successive morning

as the Earth shifts.

The city shrugs uncomfortably

close to winter.

In a month, the morning commute

will be in total darkness.

A chill will sink into my chest

and stay there, not breaking free

until next spring.

Frost will line the inside

of my bedroom window.

It will be next to impossible

to ignore my toes. Even so,

summer’s death is a welcome one.

For a moment, the trees

blush yellows, reds, purples

until, realizing themselves,

the color drains from their branches,

the leaves fall

brown, crumble,

decay

feed the soil

and nourish the roots

from which they rose.

Morning dew shimmers

at the brink of frost,

caught between water

and ice.

The air clears,

no longer burdened with

heavy swarms of mosquitoes,

flies, gnats, and the sticky

sweat of humidity.

Gusts of wind move freely

dancing along each nerve

on my face and fingertips,

sharing a hushed warning—

soon.