Dolor Of Autumn

Dolor Of Autumn 

 by David Herbert Lawrence

The acrid scents of autumn, 

Reminiscent of slinking beasts, make me fear 

Everything, tear-trembling stars of autumn 

And the snore of the night in my ear. 

For suddenly, flush-fallen, 

All my life, in a rush 

Of shedding away, has left me 

Naked, exposed on the bush. 

I, on the bush of the globe, 

Like a newly-naked berry, shrink

Disclosed: but I also am prowling 

As well in the scents that slink 

Abroad: I in this naked berry 

Of flesh that stands dismayed on the bush;

And I in the stealthy, brindled odours

Prowling about the lush 

And acrid night of autumn; 

My soul, along with the rout, 

Rank and treacherous, prowling,

Disseminated out.

For the night, with a great breath intaken,

Has taken my spirit outside 

Me, till I reel with disseminated consciousness,

Like a man who has died. 

At the same time I stand exposed

Here on the bush of the globe, 

A newly-naked berry of flesh 

For the stars to probe. 

Autumn On The Horizon 

by Joseph T. Renaldi

Autumn is on the horizon, I can tell

By the colored leaves that fell, 

While all around the land was green, 

The change in the season hardly seen.

Autumn is on the horizon, I can tell, 

Orchard trees are fruitless as well.

Their outstretched boughs as if in a spell

As the succulent leaves begin to pale.

Autumn is on the horizon, I can tell, 

Birds not singing on the porch rail

Sensing the coming of the autumn chill, 

Prepare to flock on the nearby hill.

Autumn is on the horizon, I can tell

Seeing woolly caterpillars on the boarded well, 

Squirrels scurrying across the ground

Where hickory nuts now abound.

Autumn is coming soon, if one believes, 

The land will be covered with a blanket of leaves.

Flowers wilting beneath the hazy sky, 

No longer attracting a beautiful butterfly. 

Underwater Autumn

by Richard Hugo

Now the summer perch flips twice and glides

a lateral fathom at the first cold rain,

the surface near to silver from a frosty hill.

Along the weed and grain of log he slides his tail.

Nervously the trout (his stream-toned heart

locked in the lake, his poise and nerve disgraced)

above the stirring catfish, curves in bluegill dreams

and curves beyond the sudden thrust of bass.

Surface calm and calm act mask the detonating fear,

the moving crayfish claw, the stare

of sunfish hovering above the cloud-stained sand,

a sucker nudging cans, the grinning maskinonge.

How do carp resolve the eel and terror here?

They face so many times this brown-ribbed fall of leaves

predicting weather foreign as a shark or prawn

and floating still above them in the paling sun.