Autumn Dawn

[a personal favourite]

You scream like an autumn dawn,
A crowd of red, yellow, orange, brown,
Baying towards an ever dying sun,
Trying to hold on to the hem of
The last days of summers lie,
When all belongs to carefree days
And iridescent cloudless skies.
But, alas, the summer of your youth
Has long since passed, a memory now
Of better times when the biggest trials
Of life were still bound up in
Naivety and innocence and hope,
Like a red bow on a pristine gift
You'd waited years to receive,
And waited another age before opening.
Now, though, you feel the waning of
The seasons warmth and the passing on
Of your years in the radiant sun,
To the grasping, biting cold of becoming
Middle-aged, the autumn of your life,
Yet you still persist to turn your discoloured leaves
Towards the fading sun, in hope that
Her rays will wind back the days,
Return your moist green hue,
Once again to collect dew, possibility,
Between the veins and ridges
Of a wild and uncompromising life.
But it is vanity; fallen leaves cannot
Be put back upon their tree,
As age cannot count backwards, only up,
In rising years and mounting fears,
And a growing debt to what you should,
Ought, to do; a weight of expectation.
Then, when autumn begins to feel like home,
You will come to fear the icy hands of
Winter's finality, death, cold,
Against your worn and bitter palms,
The first frost of old age setting in,
Your last season, last age of ages,
Dying like forgotten embers in
A fire that once filled the hearth
And melted the world to a glow
Of love, and life, and youth,
And a promise of a future where
You can achieve more than your forebears
Even dared to imagine possible,
Though now futile, the time for
Daydreams and delusions of grandeur
Has passed away, into memory,
The time for begging for the comfort of
A blanket on your deathbed,
A hot water bottle to warm the cobwebbed,
Vacant spaces where joy used to live,
Fast approaches.
So scream, my autumn sunrise,
Resist the fall of your life,
And run back across time and experience,
Undo the scars, the losses, the maybes,
Retake up arms and cling once more
To every course of action, each opportunity,
Smooth out the wrinkles, press the fabric
Of life out hard and hot and starched,
Work and eke out every last half-chance,
Do what no other man can;
Change the passing of the seasons.