LATE SUMMER

We live near a National Trust park but I knew it when I was a girl and it was just trees and
all the other lovely things in a familiar wood.  We go up a lot usually but we’ve not been
for some time  because of illness.  We’re gearing up to visit again but this poem
reminds me so much of that lovely place.   I remember standing in one particular spot
and starting to write this poem in my head.   

LATE SUMMER

Late summer now
And the little lost paths
Are dry and cindery under foot;
Dust and the early mist
Curling around the edges of the day. 

A leaf falls, as the trees
Shake their slow golden heads,
Filling the air with the sad sound
Of leaves falling, drifting, tumbling down. 

Over the hedge, the stubbled fields
Sigh, and settle into waiting
For their dry stalks to be ploughed
Into the earth.
Lovely furrows then, stretching
Into the infinity of a much older vision.  

And Autumn dances in the woods,
Her red and orange skirts
Billowing around her twinkling feet.
Her red-berried head bobbing with excitement
As the time comes
When her beauty can be seen in the burning forest,
Her loveliness caught in the cobwebbed hedgerows,
In those tiny, sparkling shawls of light,
That wrap us about
With the fierce grace and beauty of love. 

                                          © 2011 Gwen Grant