Autumn Number 3

September opened up with stormy seas Gulls screeched and plummeted through broken billows At night the moon seemed cut out from a frieze And pebbles shivered in the tidal shallows A fisherman coughed through a rasping wheeze And owls swooped hooting through frost haunted hollows The tips of leaves were touched by death, all -searing And fields stood empty, shorn in harvest's shearing On wires long strings of birds moved out from trees Drawn by the need to migrate, feathers stirring The world turned on its axis, oceans heaved In murmuration, starlings' wings were whirring Dark forests, gleaned of birds, in silence grieved As one by one air-children slipped their mooring High over wynds and lanes and steaming cattle In ditches, seed pods shook their throaty rattle How soon the lonely shepherd did forget The birdsong in the springtime days of wishing When thrush's tune poured sylvan from its breast As feathers lifted, in the sky gone flashing He saw a cloud, like a white dove gyrate Sipped warm tea from his flask, to shield off chilling Driving his flock from broken dykes and fences September drilled its sourness through the senses Too soon came autumn, palsy unalloyed Wielding its paints of amber, orange, red This cold invader could not be delayed Caught all, and fast its putrefaction bred Leaves fell, like dying soldiers, wounded, bled Then every fading flower hung its head And all warm summer's pleasantries were dead