Autumn

- The Seasons Of Grief: Chapter III - Poem I -

Beneath the ochre canopy, I denied the winds their truth,

The dying leaves, a choir of chaos, gave me damning proof

Each branch I mocked, a hand unmoored, reaching for a sky torn,

The clouds reflect the fractured life I wished I’d still have worn

The amber dusk unraveled me, thread by thread,

Until I was a splintering tapestry where my brittle hopes bled

The air carried ruin, the ground carried a dirge of breath,

I never heard signs of life, just the memories of recent death

Cold rivers ran wild through fallen maples undone,

Harvest moons hung low to greet me in the absence of the sun

The russet trees wept rubies, a sound akin to a hymn,

October country was not kind to me, so I hung my head low beneath the brim

The lies spread like the incoming frost’s creepy design,

They’ll shatter the veneer I’d clung to as mine

A storm was rising within the gallows, unruly like November’s gale,

It tore apart what my denial sought to veil

Scattered acorns cracked between cobblestones,

I step on them towards a cabin like something out of Woodstock, I roam

I sought solace through the window’s twilight auburn haze,

Even the hills are engulfed in the fire of my lost days

Sweater-clad in my disposition, the cornfields called my name,

An elegy for something, anything to blame

The earth decayed before my eyes; its damage too vast,

Yet I still cling to the past

I’m supposed to be ready to say farewell,

To cross a gilded stage where my broken stories dwell

I don’t know how to fix my bridges I’ve burned along the way,

My mind is still unraveled, my life swept wholly away

The wheat fields are home to my other selves, lost forever in autumn,

Too broken to be unchanging, now they wander in a constant state of bargaining