FALL, HELSINKI

The first cool hint of winter
Came this Sunday morning
From a pale blue sky
To shine
With lemon light on yellow leaves
And fire up maple reds.
It jostled stiff brown stems
To rustle in the flower beds.
So frail and shy a creature
With the slightest touch
Transmutes the summer’s feature
By not much --
In such a gentle evil way
One does not even quail
To feel the softest brush
Of faint death’s tail.
Has this ghost pupa hatched
From out the extra hour
Set to sleep through summer
From the Spring?
Or merely tipped and spilled
From Time itself
Which wobbles
With the planet’s bobbles
In its sunswept swing?
No matter.

Transparently
It glitters in the weakened sun
To stiffen out its membranes
With their needle spines.
Cooling breezes tease away
The heat of summer
Shed like a sunburned skin
To sweep like flying silken scarves
Far down to Africa.

It needs three months
To gnaw away the green to brown
And brown to black,
To fill its lungs with poison cold and ice
And crack the shell of life,
To spill the snow with frozen birds
And mice
And etch its black-white artistry
On dead gray clouds.

A moon-white sun
Awaits for when
The Earth slides down its path
To certain rendezvous with life
Begun again.

Charlotte's Web ¥ Poem 21 ¥ Jans Menu