Brown birds,
brown leaves,
crackles, crumbles,
webs in eaves.
The glossy crow
in polished black
perpetual
melancholiac.
Pallid sky,
sunlight void,
droops a greyness
ichthyoid.
Pond of slate,
grass turned rubble,
wind that moans
of toil and trouble.
The year grows weary,
needs to sleep,
gardens snuggle
in winter’s keep.
Beshawled and flanneled,
I watch the earth
beshawl itself
with color dearth.
With apologies to Shakespeare.
It wrapped me like a cloak, that papery sound. October’s leaves, battered and bruised, but holding yet, whooshed thickly in a wind tantrum determined to strip away every remnant of summer, thrashing the trees and twisting each leaf, growling down from the dishwater sky and around our little homes, impatient for winter.
The air was warm still, but one muscular shove from the south bore an invisible stream of ice, a whisper in the tumult, frost-winged specter. I felt it and knew then it was saying what it came to say, this insistent rush.
I bent over the lavender, itself bent low. Spent, sleepy, it offered up a final incense as I trimmed back its floppy stems. Two fat bees lumbered through the air to watch and sniff. They too heard the Babel of the papery leaves, in tongues of crimson and copper, and saluted the deep purple of my harvest. They too knew the time.
Late summer’s plumes, crabapple bangles,
frothy wedgwood sky —
the layer cakes of seasons
delectably pass by.
Yes, yes, everything reminds me of dessert.
But you knew that.
Poetry makes me hungry.
September stands tall
between spring’s childhood
and winter’s dotage,
a bit round perhaps
with pumpkin paunch,
its brow gold-speckled,
but vital still.
One leaf, two leaves,
abacus of mortality,
drop
in quiet obedience
to the authority of time.
A cicada sings of ennui,
its sleepy notes sticking to
wet morning air
where August lingers.
The heat is searing
pressing, wet
we’re all bedraggled
impatient, yet
I think I see
that change in light
that vests the world
for autumn’s rite.
Oddments 