after October

by Natalie Marino

It is morning. 

The sidewalk’s maple trees 

offer their final applause  

of leaves.  

A faraway field is faded  

like a fallen orange. 

I want  

to find a reason to make 

everything seem worthwhile 

but the street is vacant.  

Mountains in the distance  

reveal their blue hue. 

The air is as still  

as a broken promise, 

the sky an empty pasture. 

Natalie Marino is a poet and physician. Her work appears in Atlas and Alice, Gigantic Sequins, Hobart, Isele Magazine, Pleiades, Rust + Moth, The Shore, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, Memories of Stars, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press (June 2023). She lives in California.