Autumn: a fragile glory

The orchards had yielded their treasure
To the last drop.
Even now the cedar milked by the whining press
Grants its nectar of wheat-ripe sop,
Autumn's Pleasure!

Fire consumes woods here
It burns warm in greedy  tongues intense-
Crimson, orange, dazzling yellow, deep gold and burnt sienna
Dance wild in a brief madness
Possessed
By death desire,
glow under the blood-red ire searing the air
The savage desire
In the ancient veins
Turning her last crop
Into an egress
Violent,
Incandescent.

When the long dark shadow of Winter crouches at the door
And the sanguine sunset turns chill, dreading the Close
Imminent.

The lake turns a glassy blue
New-gathering night welling up in the cool, haunted shade
The raiments of warmth are shed by the season
Ruefully
Stillness and hibernation , shade and disgrace,
The wheezy air the woods undress
The contoured fields stare listless at the loathed touch.
The burnt-out air swoons in sudden seizure.

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