When September Comes

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hen September comes
the sunrise is a sunset;
              a rolling pageant
decked in cremation colours,
flickering in the wind;
clouds reaping russet-red fires
under their bellies;
a molten harvest
where the skin of the sky is burnished
with beaten coppers to tarnished golds,
and night and day are lovers entwined
hesitating to part as dawn unfolds;      but separation comes
as September does to life,
the dark draining
away to funereal white
that stills the voice of first-light,
and where its birdsong is silence;
a mourning pitched deep at its core,

              for the body of the day
is torn in two;
dawn is the breaking of war,
and laid to rest
in unrest                            stars disappear in hibernation
to shine no more;
this is how we bury
our dead in autumn,
stinging as bitterly
as the cooling regret, decomposing
for the love savoured,
but left unsaid in a darkness
that resets;

              where intimacy is lost
to an unforgiving air
that strikes at us
to make us less; and the rain
turns mercenary,
erasing the cold and the weary --
and September embraces its true nature:                            a stony pillow of tears,
a headrest for melancholy;
intermingling with its own stinging fury,
where the only choice
seems to be to stand still
or to drown less slowly;

              and to think how quickly -- so quickly! --
September comes as awkward novice
to unfeeling winter;
and how we bend over submissively
as a jaded mistress,
before we even have time to remember
the tributes we had once
given to the idols of summer;      now to see the spring green as fallen
leaves sickened sepia
at the foot of trees coloured charcoal ember;

              now to see the light burning out
in a sky of cherry-wood cedar;
fool's fire scalding
the hands of the puppeteer
that drops the clouds lower,
to hover and dangle darkly together,
in mimicry of the evening
coming ever more near,

              now to see the lovers meet again,
with the sallow Moon too cold to wake,
and the Sun sleeping too long after daybreak;
with the wind,
still flickering its colours
in a sharp intake of breath                            -- a knell of death --
a calling siren or signal
to mark the coming chill;

              and the initial heated flush,
which drains away to leave
an underlining residue
of blues and greys
that colour code
a day which no longer has the will
to wake, or to lay dormant
in between us,

              but to go while we freeze;
the living gone to sleep in earthen clay,
for all are as puppets in solemn stasis
when September comes
creeping                            creeping                            creeping
to stay.

Published 29 April, 2012

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