Hm . . . Memorable . . . what? (He peers closer.) Equinox, memorable equinox. (He raises his head, stares blankly front. Puzzled.) Memorable equinox? . . . (Pause. He shrugs his head shoulders, peers again at ledger, reads.) Farewell to–(he turns the page)–love.
— Samuel Beckett, Krapp’s Last Tape
In Florida, autumn came
as a change in the light
in late afternoon,
around mid-October.
I hardly noticed it
until I was twenty.
A girlfriend left me.
I wrote a poem, ephemeral
as the love it mourned.
At sixty, autumn seems
like that last song
sung by Dave Guard’s Trio
(later covered by Sinatra):
vintage wine, days decreasing.
And now, in Brooklyn
(I’ve lived life backwards:
Florida, Manhattan, Brooklyn),
an older voice whispers
gently, to my gentile ears,
L’shanah tovah.
Claude Scales
(First published in Self-Absorbed Boomer, September 26. 2006.)
