Feeling Fall

Nature’s nutmeg nuances titillate the naked eye

Cinnamon-ginger splashes scintillate declining leaf

Earth is a buffet laden with squash soup and pumpkin pie

Yum, yum we hum and savour autumn’s sighing stoop and sheaf

Posh pink and purple flowers cease; snuffed like starlight at dawn

Blossoms burn out and strew the ash of wonder’s seraph-hymn

The sash that binds the clash of earth and sky turns red and bronze

Before mulled hue of gray and blue culls color from the limb

The day turns dark at dinner now; the lights of home-sweet-home

Dot dusky streets like welcome beacons to work-weary throngs

The smell of supper mingled with wood-smoke evokes a poem

Stoked by echoes of childhood and time’s very present songs

Change moves its mouth against my ear; it whispers Wild Unknowns

And makes me taste more slowly the haste poured from Here to There

A wine fine-pressed of apples, grapes and pungent undertones

It steals my breath where life and death hang heavy on the air

How is it, farewell tugging hard on heart-strings, throbs and thrills

And drapes around our being a mantle of glorious grief

Want, torn between the weaning wind that veers and sobs, instills

With vexatious arousal, wild hunger and sweet relief

© Janet Martin