A Taste of October

1.
The day is crisp and russet as an apple,
an invitation to crunch into autumn,
to eat the season.

2.
Chilling air echoes
with skeins and vees of geese
hogging the sky for just a minute.

3.
Stars stud the night, twinkling
messages to the gas rigs
out at sea.

4.
A kiss in the dark,
tinged with alcohol and wood smoke—
two figures alone, together on an unlit road.

5.
But then, we will always remember
that tenth day of October
when you came back into my life.

Kim M. Russell, 15th October 2026

This Thursday at the dVerse Poets Pub, we are meeting the bar with Laura and imagism in 5.

Laura has shared a poem of her own from 2021 that WordPress dug up, entitled ‘A Third October’, which was based on an MTB prompt from Björn and which gave her the idea to revisit The Cadralor, a hybridised name from the two inventors, Lori Howe and Christopher Cadra, which has five numbered stanzas, with 3-10 lines per stanza and keeps the same chosen number of stanzas throughout, with each stanza standing alone as an imagist poem, with just the obliquest of connections. The fifth stanza pulls together the four unrelated stanzas into a poem of love or yearning. No rhymes or syllabic meter.

9 thoughts on “A Taste of October”

  2. Absolutely beautiful, Kim. The first stanza had me smiling….and realizing that not only do I love the colors of autumn but yes, I do enjoy eating my way and drinking my way through the season: apples, warm spiced apple cider, pumpkin soup and pumpkin pie, and a Starbucks double shot pumpkin spice with soy latte!!!

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    1. Thank you so much, Lill. I’m not sure if I have ever tasted pumpkin pie and will be looking out for some next week. I do eat pumpkin and butternut squash soup, though. Warm spice apple cider sounds lovely too.

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