An Autumn Ballad

There's this stage during autumn where, after most of the leaves have fallen and have littered the streets and patios, where Indian summer is a distant memory, and summer barely a memory at all, where an almost imperceptible chill in the air lingers over everything, and tacitly hints at winter's approach.

During this time, and during the orange autumn evenings that this time produces, I always feel a sort of peacefulness that seems to shroud everything in view, as if the sacred presence of antiquity visited earth once again … a very beautiful time of the year.

A coldness in the air also begins to emerge, almost unnoticeable at first, and for me, thankfully so. Not that I have anything at all against winter, but during such a beautiful time of year one wishes winter to be delayed for the time being.

It is of this first vague perception of winter, expressed through the gradual emergence of coldness in the environment, that this poem is about. It is about autumn slumbering away as winter's awakening transpires.

Hope you enjoy ...

Autumn Sleeps

Beneath the naked maple boughs
Astir the autumn leaves
They rustle as the north winds rouse
And swirl below the eaves

Within this swirling there's a dance
Where dying loam gives way
And fills with musk the cold expanse
That hangs upon the day

So too the chimes that gently ring
That fain would autumn keep
Alas! the north winds through them sing
Of autumn's coming sleep

-jwm

Of the Poem (Parameters):

Stanza: Four quatrains in the form of a ballad
 
Meter: First and second line of each stanza are in iambic tetrameter (that is, eight syllables per line); the second and fourth,  iambic trimeter (six syllables per line)

Rhyme scheme: alternating, i.e. abab per stanza

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