Autumn - a Variant

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Autumn – a variant

In some confusion, laughing through the leaves,
Wild, giddy Autumn, her hair disheveled,
Happily dances sweet October in,
Unsure if the morning calls for a frost
Or should stray sunbeams whisper through the clouds.

Autumn is the golden antiphon to Spring;
She vests herself among the morning mists;
Her favorite flowers are her coronet,
Wild, wanton flowers, yellow and white and gold,
To celebrate the liturgies of time.

The seasons-turning coverts sigh in the breeze
As Autumn teaches each leaf how to fly:
A delicate descent, and then a brief repose
Until a giggling little breeze skips through
To cue chaotic minuets, and so

Like faeries laughing on a moonlit night
Leaves scatter and skitter across the leas
Across the lanes, across the lawns to lead
The drifting months through Advent’s silences,
And finally to the joys of Christmastide.

Leaf-Time

Mack Hall, HSG

Leaf-Time

O may our lives close like a leaf that falls

And laughs in falling at its happy end
Air-dancing down a sky of Dresden blue
Sun-sliding sideways in a blithesome breeze
Soft-singing in a sweet sinopian sun
Who smiles grandfatherly on each blest leaf
Remembering its spring, and summer too
Pushed from the wood after the last fell frost
To grow from mother-tree and taste the air
In the Apollonian sun of youth
To work and play in Saturnian summer
And then to glow in ripe Pomona’s dusk
In celebration of all life, and then
At last to leap into eternity

25 September 2011