FASHION Poem: Autumn blacks, by Elissa Zacher

The air is heavy with humid heat
quickening the perfumes of the park,
crab-apples, pungent rosehips and lusty lavender.
The melody of the fountain is
played by the breeze that skips through.
All this under a sky of duck-egg
blue and cotton fluff clouds just
tinged with indigo.

The season has yet to flavour the
leaves with the scent and colour of its
spice, yet for the populace the
blackout curtains of their
September mentality have been drawn.

There is only one hue with many
acceptable shades. That is black.
Be it charcoal, jet or ebony – it is
dour, serious, still black. In the most
suffocating of fabrics, layer upon layer.
As though the wearer resides in the
long arctic twilight. A swaddling cloth.

Anything ribald would
be to announce that one is
the scarlet whore of Babylon.

Moods as melancholy as their
black coffee. The communal
social consciousness allows some exceptions
to the rule, be they unprepossessing.
A reticent russet. A meek moss.
A prudent plum. A tepid taupe.
Even the denim takes on a
midnight feel.

A promiscuous palette of colour so
ribald and tempestuous as an English
garden left to follow its whimsy.
Truly what a difference a day makes
as the calendar page turns from August

As though in a haze I recall seeming moments
before the flowers in the
park had competition in garish glory.

And so I sit rebellious in
raspberry, the September sun filtering
through leaves as lingering a lime
as my Italian ice