autumn’s eves

An uneasy truce towards dawn

Between those who love darkness

And them that it had crept upon

To hold to the stillness before morn

And want of the day

It was an unseemly silence but

It held all enthrall; birds kept their songs

And the familiar  early whirrs were not heard.

The drip of August dews rang like bells against

The paling blue sky  - an uneasy truce as time plodded by

The purposes of all the to-do

Came clear as the faraway glow

Began to show above the vague horizon

For now, we leave summer’s ends for autumn’s eves

So precious is the change

We enter the last of a long, strange year

So eventful as to be kept long after the final lines

And the heartfelt, heavenly applause.