November's Madrigal

The wind is a beggar, aimless and forlorn

Nothing to torment but the frost-stricken corn

Its backdrop is gray now; the azure caress

Of summer is filled with November’s duress

The skyline is stripped of its autumn allure

Its boast lines dull gardens, the street and pasture

The song of the willow; a stiff-lipped requiem

Where summer-night lovers would tarry and dream

To the sigh of the bracken, the lilt of the brook

Now subtly silenced; each leaf-laden nook

A haven for poet’s or wander-lusts ploy

Teasing heavy hearts with its bittersweet joy

While over the meadow-land hovers a pall

Strumming the air with November’s madrigal

We tread the surface of each season’s lament

Pondering the haste of life’s tender torment

As winter’s harbinger roughly kisses our face

And nips our noses with reckless embrace

Ah, suture the vault from which mere moments flow

For even as they tease our thought, there they go

Melding to the landscape; a sun-shadow swell

In un-sculpted mind-frames of fall’s fond farewell

Broken buds scatter their demise at our feet

Resting where the circle of life is complete

We cannot retrieve from the crypt of the earth

The husk back to bloom, or the dead to re-birth

Yet, beauty unbiased sweeps this muted hall

Composing the dirge of November’s madrigal

The harvest is gathered; the furrow is plowed

The garden lies dormant beneath leafy shroud

The wind wanders heartless through woodlot and grove

Like a jilted lover still looking for love

And we stoke the fire dissuading the will

Of icy aggression and wintery chill

Wood-smoke spirals wistfully; chimney-flute swoon

The vesper snuffs daylight from late afternoon

As night draws its sable and somnolent veil

Over sallow, slumbering valley and dale

Biting tears spit from the glowering skies

Pelting earth’s sphere with its sleet-lullabies

Tucking the landscape beneath its gray shawl

While coldly crooning November’s madrigal

© Janet Martin

I was traipsing through November's outdoors for a few hours and I heard it. This Monday is the total opposite of last Monday's howling gale. Today is stark-still.

  then, suddenly I remembered that deer-hunting season started today so I decided to head home lest a trigger-happy 'young buck';)) mistakes me for 'Bambi'.