AUTUMN SONNET

All outside is green and russet and gold.
In late sunlight, the leaves curl and glitter
Against the clouds’ bustle and sky’s blue cold.
In our garden, they dance like bright litter
With wind-chimes pealing wood, steel and seashells.
Much as we bid this rainbow season stay,
We heed a bell that Man, not Nature, knells:
Time thus will turn back on itself today.
Soon the darkness will account for the hours
And night fall on the brink of a decade
Held in the world’s hand like fading flowers,
Long before a New Year can be remade.
Tomorrow, beyond our bedroom curtain,
Through a mist of voile, this much is certain.



(2009)


Third in ‘ The Seasons: A Sonnet Sequence’. The Autumn of 2009 in the UK was a fabulously colourful one and this poem came to me one bright Sunday morning when I was gazing out over the back gardens of the houses where we live and vaguely wondering about the effects of climate-change.

The picture was taken on Abbey Park.