Autumn is the season that signals change for launching a gentler life, and it is the time for harvesting the fruits sown earlier in the year.
The variety of colors that are bound to fade and wither and the cooling weather have always inspired poets.
Here are five poems on autumn by Joy Cagil: Autumn (A haiku chain) floating from the sky scarlet leaves of bitterness soon the harvest moon some shrill geese in flight the brook sluggish like the sap gold turns sepia horse chestnuts rolling over vermilion piles on the rusty lawn with final farewells a lonely heart breaking in the bare arms of oaks Ballad of the Wind Among autumn leaves rustling in thick frenzy, the wind sees the apple and rises with a celestial song.
"Rosy lush lips touching fingertips on emerald green the chosen palette come gently sway, to mark the moment, with luxury of weightlessness.
" Shiny, untouched, a pigment of impetuous joy, awakening red, delicious, floating to the wind's tune, welcoming, the conceit of choice.
"Rosy lush lips touching fingertips on emerald green the chosen palette you gently fell, to mark the moment; did you think the wind would catch you? The color of dreams fading away, when grass kneels to cushion the fall to miss the harvest in a rotten mush, but upon reflection, it's worth it all.
More vital than life is the vanity of a kiss, if beauty is madness when the wind blows.
" Autumn Rain The autumn Rain spread nail polish over the city to glitter on the sidewalks, asking the flat world to come alive and shape up without stocks and bonds.
But the traffic was hectic and the people were stacked dominoes.
In frizzled kiosks, tabloids turned to paper boats and went a-sailing in the gutters, avoiding haphazard feet in boots.
Because the traffic was hectic and the people were stacked dominoes.
Then rain imposed authority over the umbrellas with the pitter patter feet of poetry's thrust for a little change in focus to create a change in result.
Still the traffic was hectic and the people were stacked dominoes.
On Crabapple Beach Before Crabapple Beach rolls over in its sleep to dream of summer people who'll desert it again, I scoop up the sand inside the arches of my feet and wander under the rising moon, unafraid of the beach bums, the cool water, or anything else except drowning in the ocean between me and the world.
Accordingly, I peek for clues of life inside well-lighted beach-house windows: soup steaming on a stove, white flowers in a coffee mug, two lovers in an embrace, slender volumes of verse on a windowsill, promising an eternity of simple joys to souls with private pains.
And I recall a delicate moment when, on a late autumn night, on Crabapple Beach, a little girl penned her first line of poetry, her first newscast to the world, with a sigh, as if saying, "I do," to a lifelong marriage of clumsily scribbled words from her spirit, and she felt the earth move under her feet, before overnight-gusts barreled through, inserting icicles inside the sand.
Mute Autumn They met in a dream where fireflies flicked in quick farewells and farmers gathered lush harvests under a fragile sun.
While rusting leaves wavered between color and reflection, whispering rumors as they fell, she warmed her hands by her heart's fire, watching him walk up the plank over the pond.
He, a migrating bird; she, a deep-rooted willow, speechless, deliberating the fusion of two separate species in a unique world.
In straw-filled terraces, never enough nerve to talk, Delicious, Gala, Rome, Winesap, Cortland, Jonathan, a windfall crop, she held up the apples one by one and crushed them into glistening cider, trying to charm him with her potion.
In that season of colorful shadows, so adeptly developed was the illusion's art, the emotion so strong, it intimidated the psyche.
Maybe, she froze like the darkened pond, too full of mystery; maybe, he didn't hear her silence.
But then, it was just a dream, a dream that didn't make allowances for sleeping.