A Message for the Sandwich Board

I will not write the word pumpkin.
I will not see the word pumpkin.
I will not smell it spiced with cinnamon or sage.

No, I will close my eyes to the round, rippled orbs
and ask more from the September sandwich board.
I will ask it for patience and if it presses, time.

I will mock its fealty to capitalism at all costs
even as it shuns the last crops of peaches,
snubs the new bounty of icebox cold plums.

What begins must end. How we speed cycle
trying to grasp immortality. In my hand, a fig,
and in the other hand, a Purple Cherokee

stained green and red that when cut oozes
juice and jelly. No pumpkin can kiss bacon
and lettuce rightly, nor can it confer to marinara

the flavor of a simple San Marzano tomato.
So, please pass on the Pumpkin Spice latte
until the air curls at the edges like the leaves

drying upon their branches. They too will fall
when the light dwindles at work day’s end.
Until then, savor the Sungold, relish the Roma,
Let the Early Girl catch the worm.