dash

Autumn

Now mornings have that bitter smell of school  -
new uniforms, and geometry sets  -
the things you’d thought were drowned deep in the pool
of growing up.  But when the silver nets
of cobwebs string the bus stop back it comes:
that nervous chill.  Childlike, you can’t resist
the polished conkers or the windfall plums,
or lobbing acorns with a school-boy’s twist
to ricochet off lamp-posts.  Apples hang
ripe for the stealing, full of grubs and worms.
New timetables;  new rituals;  new gang.
The concentrated taste of autumn terms
comes back, intensified, reminding how
the harvest festival exotic fruits
rotted so fast  -  and it’s no different now,
when everything’s returning to its roots.

autumn


D. A. Prince


If you have any comments on this poem,  D. A. Prince would be pleased to hear them.

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