Sonnet of Late Autumn's Late Day

How blue twilight falls to the halls of late day

How cold on the fallow its sallow kiss lies

Its stark invitation to put toil away

Calling where autumn is closing its eyes

Gentle, the mantle of scarlet and gold

Drifts from our visage to cradles of dirt

Muted mosaic enfolded and rolled

Into Time’s nevermore where echoes flirt

With love’s appointments and whispers of loss

Juxtaposed here in autumn’s albatross

Those places we see where nobody sees

Beckon when dusk dangles dark overhead

The weight of Want strangles laughter with ease

Yet without Want we are already dead

The fall of fall fills landscapes fully bare

Stripping the tresses of girlish appeal

Save for the scrap of a leaf hanging where

Once upon May and June its high noon reeled

With newness of bloom and blueness of sky

Before Time’s hours tore holes in its sigh

Hollows are laden with autumn’s last rose

Nature relinquishes its neon tears

Brittle, they scuttle in huddled repose;

Death is a sleep without hours or years

Life is a ladle from whence seasons drip

Dusk is a pool at the end of a day

Here in late autumn how swift skylines tip

Tucking to darkness earth’s stripped overlay

Here in late autumn its late day is bent

Heavy; a levy of Past’s firmament

© Janet Martin