Another Autumn Sonnet

It pierces through our pampered summer skin

A sudden chill spilling against the earth

Reality consumes youth’s guileless grin

As teasing zephyrs harness languid mirth

The landscape tugs the hemline of the deeps

Across the molten autumnal array

Far on the slope the towering maple weeps

Into the sepulcher of life’s decay

The circuit of its fleeting gasp is stark

Against the canvases of gath’ring dark

The fret-works of fall’s naked branches reach

In unadorned humility and praise

Toward their Maker’s throne; the empty beach

Echoes the laughter of fair sun-drenched days

As leaf by burnished leaf the autumn drips

Into a vault of summers predeceased

Realization in keen kindness grips

The heart in melodies of love released

And yet as seasons pass beneath earth’s sun

Love’s hope and happiness are never done

When the last leaf drifts soundless to our feet

And silence threads the passages of time

We pause; entranced within the bittersweet   

Of autumn’s sweet and solemn pantomime

The darling rose, the crimson anemone

Bleeds back into the dust from whence it sprung

And in the haunting hollow undertone

Of early night we hear a still-song flung

Into the void of autumn’s barrenness

Beneath the Hand of hope’s tender caress

© Janet Martin