Once Upon November's Day

PAD Challenge; day 4;For today’s prompt, take the phrase “Once Upon a (blank),” replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem.

Oh, once upon November's day

When Autumn’s color-show was weaned

And orchard-fallow harvest gleaned

To leaf-lyrics that fell away

And earth succumbed to stiller hues

Beneath a port of brooding blues

And purple-misted avenues

Or noon’s unyielding gray

…oh, once upon November then

We too felt time’s incumbent will

Inept to push against the chill

That stripped the moorland and the glen

And heaped its deep with yester-leaf

And stirred the mind with kindred grief

As one more autumn slipped beneath

A consummate Amen

Yes, once upon November’s girth

We sensed, where nature’s vale was rent

And every laden limb unbent

In a requiem that lulled the earth

With filaments of somber gray

And portraits of life’s dying way

Here, once upon November’s day

We watched the end of birth

© Janet Martin