November, a balmy morn

after a week of frost

recalls September’s golden girl

we’d given up for lost.

Nights grow long, yet chill relents,

though nature’s half undressed.

Abuela in a tattered gown,

hair a graying mess.

Winter is a callous aunt,

Summer her glowering son.

But in Autumn’s muted madras,

a kind of sweetness comes

amid the wreck of bloodied leaves

and contraction of the days.

She lies with me a moment.

I pretend that she might stay.

"Indian Summer" previously appeared in Life in Me Like Grass on Fire: Love Poems, Edited by Laura Shovan.