I’d want it to be early autumn,
a day like today, still green,
but gold around the edges,

our old yellow lab lying at your feet,
a Red Stripe beer
on the redwood table.

The sky would be as soft and faded
as that shirt you used to wear,
and it would be quiet, not even birdsong,

nothing to betray
what led up to the middle
or happened in the end.

-Judith Walter Carroll, Apple Valley Review

Tagged: apple valley review, contemporary poetry, Judith Walter Carroll, learning how to write the beginning, poem, poetry