Prompt #1: Nance

for this prompt & those that follow, the bold type is the initial prompt

Ode to never seeing her again

I look inside the autumn sunset of her eyes--
eyes fogged like the first cool
morning of September.  Eyes brackish
as mulled cider.  In her eyes, a cloudy
dimness at dusk, visibility falling.

The flecks of red in her eyes like leaves
falling around a maple, bricking
the lawn with itself--how that
senescence consumes the world!
How beautiful & tragic
to scatter about what it nurtured,
&,having drained it of capability,
to discard it!

So this I wonder at
this red brick countenance of her
stare.  Hardness, but what we have
managed is a ceasefire.  This last meeting

is autumn foreshadowing winter
& a sunset is a bachelor's party before
night, the beauty of which comes from dust:
Oil in a puddle reflects a rainbow,
dirt burns on the horizon at sundown,
her hair frames her face finely.
Windswept & wild once, now it's shorter
so I, dully & lamely say, You

cut your hair? Mutinous.
It had once wound around her as ivy,
like leaves once dyed pink
then blue,
then she grew up,
then grew it out, outgrew, went grey
the same way sunsets
fade--the way a tree, feeling the first freeze
coming sheds its leaves:

Now I think I will think of
her when I smell the musk of dark
leaves wetted after a rain.