Autumn Lady by Susie Hemingway

She came rushing in, or though it seemed to me,
disbelief that this colourful Lady with her cloak of reds and golds
had already arrived, when I glanced from my window.
I must have been looking the other way!
but then we don’t count the days pursuing more important matters now…
As the relentless stricken battle appears once more on the horizon,
had she come to distract my mind or bring colours to my heart?


This feckless stunning Lady who sheds her clothes
and scatters them where she will,
like drops of tears in a template of sadness perhaps?
A powerful change of authority as restless and now incipient to decay.
Old roses fade and fall like shattered fragments of glass
from a precious mirror,
the hedgerows become bare, no more luscious berries
but still holding onto their thin strips of life.


Leaves, could they ever be more beautiful?
turning to deep maroons and burnished, glinting, jewelled colours.
Conkers appearing from their secret shells to fall in copper splendour
from the impressive stately Horse Chestnut trees.
We arrived, like we had just opened our eyes.


Another Autumn! who would have believed we would see this majestic
Lady together, dumbstruck once more at her beauty
but belligerently waging war on staying in our perfect peaceful Summer…
not for us, the rushing of time…




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