Deep-into-October Tableau or October on a Blue-gray Afternoon

 

Written in honour of this brooding, blue-gray deep-into-October afternoon

The garden has yielded its final gem 

The tree relinquishes its diadem 

The field is shorn where corn and barley gleamed 

Like gold and silver lakes as sunshine streamed 

Through a flue, gold and blue to mist-kissed piers 

The lily-dappled mead has shed its tears 

And summer like a picnic counterpane 

Is shaken out and folded up again 

The flower wonderland I dearly prized 

Where I would linger, petal-mesmerized 

Is stark and still, its thrill of grandeur spent 

Reminding me that all we have is lent 

The decanter of warmer days is drained 

The cricket melody gradually waned 

Until even the scattered cadence thinned 

And all I hear now is the brooding wind 

The chubby junco bobs among the leaves 

Quite unaware that these are autumn’s sheaves 

I wander without reason through bloom's wake 

How can such sweetness rouse such a raw ache 

Where fallow turns to furrow ‘neath the plow 

Where all we ever have is here and now 

Where we are torn between sorrow and awe 

Where earth seems so at peace with Nature’s Law 

October on a blue-gray afternoon 

Is like a bit of heaven gone too soon 

Each tree crowned in a halo, russet-bronze 

That drips and slips until the big sky yawns 

Through branches stark-naked and bold 

Etched in gnarled splendor for all to behold 

And a rush, sort of like a sudden sea 

Surges through us in spellbound sympathy 

I take my tea outside to watch the show 

The slow unraveling of red-yellow 

While dusk drops deep blue tints above yon hill 

A hint of woodsmoke wafts upon the chill 

And I am fully glad and sad at once 

Where October is a flickering sconce 

Set like a centerpiece on a buffet 

Of colour turning burnished brown and gray 

© Janet Martin