It’s autumn. No other way to say it.
The nights are indeed drawing in
and suspended between branch and eave
an all-too-sharp spider is farming its trap.
Fruitful the colours, though,
as harvest mellows into decomposition
and the promise of winter on the tongue
stings with its hint of bitterness
as if there was any way to prevent
or divert the passage of the seasons
into early nightfall, the long dark
which presages those first dawns
of a warm and pre-emptive spring.
