Can you see the colors of another fall come falling down?
Can you feel the steel undoing of autumn’s blush arabesque?
Can you hear those fingers linger boreal against the crown
Of her stately woodland effigy that once was flushed with
jest?
Can you see the stark, dark stature of nature in cold repose?
Can you taste upon the stiffness of the gale Time’s o-o-o-h-s
and a-a-a-h-s?
Oh, and can you hear the weeping of the stilly-sleeping rose
Like a dirge among the fragment-splurge of everything that
was
Can you smell upon the afternoon the blue of early dusk?
Wood-smoke prelude to appointments of unfeigned reality
Tell me, were you with the maidens that would swoon at him,
bold, brusque
While his whispers caroused and stripped summer from every
tree?
Can you hear among the quietness a sort of interlude?
Heaven’s hush before the rush of white plush rivers fills
the air
Can you feel the reel of moments seal into nature subdued
Quickened colors of another fall come falling down Time’s
stair
© Janet Martin
