Autumn Thoughts

I look upon October sky,

Besooted now with gray,

And watch the silent clash of clouds

In dank, autumnal day,

A dark-rimmed bowl of keen-edged air

That rips the branches bare.

And darkness wells from deep within

To paint my spirit bleak.

Why sighs my soul as summer slips

Beyond the solar pale?

It sighs awareness of its course

Aslant the cosmic flow;

And in that awful, soulless sea,

Where Man is scaled to sky,

My microscopic dreams become

But whispers in the stars.

Thus does my spirit darken so

When autumn touches me,

For writ within that roil of air

Is my mortality.