We Wake

We Wake

We wake to a room of thin, white frost,
with bluish toes and cold marble noses,
and the breath of sleep lingers,
caught on the fingernail chill in the air.

Overnight, the drowsy sway of
rubber-filmed leaves has ended,
reduced to a series of crunches and cracks
outside the bedroom window
under the quick steps of industrious squirrels
and feral cats in search of breakfast.

The world has lost its vernal music,
drowned out by the overhead,
parting honks of vacating geese and
the bumble of ruby-throated hummingbirds
as they flit to track the sun.

We are charmed by the scorch of colour
as it bests the green season,
and dazzled by the sheen of hanging apples
bobbing cheerfully on their branches
in the orchard by the river‘s edge.

The air is plump with flavour,
rich with the fume of roasted tree limbs
and the muddy yawn of tired dirt,
and the fields are now emptied of their fruits,
but for the swollen, sun-soused pumpkins
and tobacco-toothed Indian corn.

A shiver quakes us, the fever newly broken,
and our hands rifle for a sweater;
we are russet and butternut
in the glow of the ripened morning light.

The days will be shorter now,
the scowling, possessive night
draping the soft blaze of autumn,
but we are consoled in knowing that
we may return to the warmth of our bed
sooner than we did yesterday without
the wearisome bother of judgment.

Winter may lay a finger on our neck
as we lay sleeping,
but for now it remains just that.