The jaded first look revealed that summer might stay.
Only the second glance revealed a changing leaf,
Casting an autumnal pall over a late day,
When so slight an orange tint could tinge weak belief.
In autumn I see the empiric decline,
When leaves are surrendered to the barbaric wind,
Leaving unshorn limbs’ barren skeletal design
As before scourging, they, their colored garments rend.
When like Persephone’s tears, hope turns to dark gloom,
With only fading memory of that last day,
And with the fade of petals, the sad droop of bloom,
Dusk covers the season with darkened sky of gray
And yet, that momentary discontent of loss
Is halted in shock of color of fallen days,
When from that foliate descent to bare limbed cross
Glimpses of life even in death breach through the haze.
3 comments:
This makes "my" season sound like a time of woe! Of course, I'm very biased.
-Autumn Lipford
I take back what I said before. I remembered that "autumn" can mean "God's splendor", and Christ's death for us truly is what is so glorious about Him.
-Autumn
As Dr. Louise Cowan once told me, poetry expresses the emotion of the moment. Autumn poetry often has a melancholy flavor to it. Look at the Hopkins poem on my blog, for example. In my poem, the woe is redeemed by the beauty of the season, by the revelation of God's grace in the midst of woe, the sight of a "bare limbed cross." When I originally began working on it, the theme was sorrow over summer ending. This year, I was thrilled to see summer end, but also struck by the soberness of time passing. So maybe you need to write a poem celebrating the fun and beauty of the season.
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