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Autumn signals change. It is the season for launching a gentler life and the time for harvesting the fruits sown earlier in the year. The variety of colors that are bound to fade and wither and the cooling weather have always inspired poets.

Here are five poems on autumn by Joy Cagil:

Autumn (A haiku chain)

floating from the sky
scarlet leaves of bitterness
soon the harvest moon

some shrill geese in flight
the brook sluggish like the sap
gold turns sepia

horse chestnuts rolling
over vermilion piles
on the rusty lawn

with final farewells
a lonely heart breaking in
the bare arms of oaks

-----------------

Ballad of the Wind

Among autumn leaves
rustling in thick frenzy,
the wind sees the apple
and rises
with a celestial song.

'Rosy lush lips touching fingertips
on emerald green the chosen palette
come gently sway, to mark the moment,
with luxury of weightlessness.'

Shiny, untouched,
a pigment of impetuous joy,
awakening red, delicious,
floating to the wind's tune,
welcoming,
the conceit of choice.

'Rosy lush lips touching fingertips
on emerald green the chosen palette
you gently fell, to mark the moment;
did you think the wind would catch you?

The color of dreams fading away,
when grass kneels to cushion the fall
to miss the harvest in a rotten mush,
but upon reflection, it's worth it all.

More vital than life is
the vanity of a kiss,
if beauty is madness
when the wind blows.'

----------------------

Autumn Rain

The autumn Rain
spread nail polish
over the city
to glitter on
the sidewalks,
asking the flat world
to come alive
and shape up without
stocks and bonds.

But the traffic was hectic
and the people were stacked dominoes.

In frizzled kiosks,
tabloids turned
to paper boats
and went a-sailing
in the gutters,
avoiding haphazard
feet in boots.

Because the traffic was hectic
and the people were stacked dominoes.

Then rain imposed authority
over the umbrellas
with the pitter patter feet of
poetry's thrust
for a little change in
focus
to create a change in
result.

Still the traffic was hectic
and the people were stacked dominoes.

-----------

On Crabapple Beach

Before Crabapple Beach rolls over
in its sleep to dream
of summer people
who'll desert it again,
I scoop up the sand inside the arches
of my feet and wander
under the rising moon,
unafraid of the beach bums,
the cool water,
or anything else except
drowning
in the ocean between
me and the world.

Accordingly, I peek
for clues of life inside
well-lighted beach-house windows:
soup steaming on a stove,
white flowers in a coffee mug,
two lovers in an embrace,
slender volumes of verse
on a windowsill,
promising an eternity of simple joys
to souls with private pains.

And I recall a delicate moment
when, on a late autumn night,
on Crabapple Beach,
a little girl penned her first line of poetry,
her first newscast to the world,
with a sigh, as if saying, 'I do,'
to a lifelong marriage
of clumsily scribbled words from her spirit,
and she felt the earth move
under her feet,
before overnight-gusts barreled through,
inserting icicles inside the sand.

-----------------

Mute Autumn

They met in a dream
where fireflies flicked in quick farewells
and farmers gathered lush harvests
under a fragile sun.

While rusting leaves wavered between color and reflection,
whispering rumors as they fell,
she warmed her hands by her heart's fire,
watching him walk up the plank over the pond.
He, a migrating bird; she, a deep-rooted willow,
speechless, deliberating the fusion
of two separate species
in a unique world.

In straw-filled terraces,
never enough nerve to talk,
Delicious, Gala, Rome, Winesap,
Cortland, Jonathan, a windfall crop,
she held up the apples one by one
and crushed them into glistening cider,
trying to charm him with her potion.

In that season of colorful shadows,
so adeptly developed was the illusion's art,
the emotion so strong, it intimidated the psyche.
Maybe, she froze like the darkened pond,
too full of mystery;
maybe, he didn't hear her silence.
But then, it was just a dream,
a dream that didn't make allowances
for sleeping.