Fall Haiku and Other Poetry by Reid McGrath

Fall Haiku

New England college
towns: Pumpkins, apples, breakfast
in a warm café.

Swamp-maples afire!
Rusty colored barns, silos
draped in bittersweet…

In their black pea-coats,
off of the Metro North, the
leaf-peepers arrive.

Cross-country. Small-town
football. The leaf-smell hunting—
God I love the Fall…

The Little Vector

(a tennos)

My knee is like a cantaloupe: I am a humbled man.
It seems brutal that you are a part of the Master Plan.
The Desert States have scorpions; the South has rattlesnakes;
Australia and hot Africa have beasts within their brakes.
The Sea has sharks, the North has grizz, Islands have weird spiders;
while those in Northern Asia have Siberian tigers.
The Amazon has piranhas and the black caiman too.
Here in the Hudson Valley we are mostly plagued by you.
Because you’re small, you are a threat; your bite won’t even prick.
If left unchecked: your Lyme could kill. You are a bloody Tick!

Featured Image: “Autumn Afternoon, the Wissahickon” by Thomas Moran

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