I had a meeting to go to last night, and didn’t find time to post, but it’s still Friday in much of the world… I’ve been thinking about this poem lately, because the signs of autumn coming are once more in the air. I had to hunt through 5 or 6 notebooks of poems to find it, but I’ve dated each poem as I wrote it in, so I only had to look at late summer…
Magpies are singing
autumn songs
And nights are growing longer
Summer is fading
every day
Cold nights are burning
crab apples red
Clouds rush the sky
and earth lies dead
Everything changes
the same every year
The summer comes
then goes.
This summer started early, with hot days in a mercilessly dry October. We have been noticing signs of autumn being early – those magpie songs, and the Belladonnas blooming much earlier than other years. For us, autumn is when the rains should come, it’s when the grass grows green over the tawny summer paddocks, and the danger of fires is past. It’s probably my favourite time of year, not least because I get to eat all those beautiful mellow autumn fruits!