Autumn in Turbotville
by Jon Raymont Jost
The church door opens
Me in to sunlit cold
And the noon air
Is sweet with ripened leaves
Another step
Black gum and birch collide:
A scope of flame
That frames my new-cleansed sight
I stride into
A rustling corn-fed wind
And joy-inspired
I cannot help but smile
A little girl
With clear October eyes—
I’ve never met—
Yet greets me, and friend-wise,
“Hello,” she smiles
Her brown face, lifted, looks
Me in the eye
And sees my secret there
And knows we share
In the ineffable
God-good delight
In this gold-gilded earth
She waits for my
Reply, and satisfied,
Passes me by,
A lingering autumn breeze
J.R. Jost is a husband, father, linguist, enthusiast of coffee and smoking (meat, not leaves), secretly a singer-songwriter, and openly a philologist in its etymological sense: a lover of language and of words.
Photography by Kennneth Godoy