Richard Reeve
Autumn
Fruitlessly I fall once more in love with the barren tree.
Her cold arms grip the sun in a perpetual autumn
of age-worn friends, of sad reminiscence, of the worn art
that hauls its wares like a patient down the street,
of age and the pain of rediscovering old pain
in a sunless world, there in the garden in the damp.
Where her shadow lingers lies my heart’s presentiment;
I have dug among hook-grass and wilding bulbs,
hoping for warmth that might be intrinsic to the loam;
but the dew comes quickly, dark falls off the stars
like the leaves that slipped from her unrelenting limbs.
The awareness grows that I am nothing to her;
I retread the mashed grass that my first forays made,
and wish only to hide in the ignorance of sleep.
