Written in honour of this brooding, blue-gray deep-into-October afternoon
The garden has yielded its final gem
The tree relinquishes its diadem
The field is shorn where corn and barley gleamed
Like gold and silver lakes as sunshine streamed
Through a flue, gold and blue to mist-kissed piers
The lily-dappled mead has shed its tears
And summer like a picnic counterpane
Is shaken out and folded up again
The flower wonderland I dearly prized
Where I would linger, petal-mesmerized
Is stark and still, its thrill of grandeur spent
Reminding me that all we have is lent
The decanter of warmer days is drained
The cricket melody gradually waned
Until even the scattered cadence thinned
And all I hear now is the brooding wind
The chubby junco bobs among the leaves
Quite unaware that these are autumn’s sheaves
I wander without reason through bloom's wake
How can such sweetness rouse such a raw ache
Where fallow turns to furrow ‘neath the plow
Where all we ever have is here and now
Where we are torn between sorrow and awe
Where earth seems so at peace with Nature’s Law
October on a blue-gray afternoon
Is like a bit of heaven gone too soon
Each tree crowned in a halo, russet-bronze
That drips and slips until the big sky yawns
Through branches stark-naked and bold
Etched in gnarled splendor for all to behold
And a rush, sort of like a sudden sea
Surges through us in spellbound sympathy
I take my tea outside to watch the show
The slow unraveling of red-yellow
While dusk drops deep blue tints above yon hill
A hint of woodsmoke wafts upon the chill
And I am fully glad and sad at once
Where October is a flickering sconce
Set like a centerpiece on a buffet
Of colour turning burnished brown and gray
© Janet Martin
