One of my Poems

A Sestina – Autumnal Regrets


Her forest littered with ghosts of leaves,
having no way to see or know
the pathways that, in sight, may
lead the wanderings from Spring to Fall,
she follows the ghostlines of dust-mote-beams of light
waiting for the light to hit her skin, and call forth the sun.

Blinded by the obscuring clouds who cover the sun,
she is aimless in the way she's taken her leave,
her steps resonate no noise, being light.
She stops to listen. No,
No noise of people, no sound for her fall,
and she struggles to stand, waiting for what may.

What, she wonders in half-murmer, may
follow the noise of a song unsung,
may carry the weight of those who fall,
may paint the trails of those who leave
no footstep or trace behind? Who is to know
what lies in the dark without a light?

"No, not a noise nor sound nor trill nor shadow nor ghost to light-
not a creature nor foul nor beast nor birdsong to carry! May
those who hear things as such in the forest know
what damns them as they step unheeded, no song
to carry the passage of those who leave!"
Ever-weep those ghosts who carry the fall.

And try as she might to outrun these spirits, she should fall
into piles of dust and worn time by the aching, dying grass, no light
to penetrate these perpetrated glooms, ghosts of trees among their own discarded leaves
with no reminder but faded color to call back to their time in May.
Body calloused and wracked with tremors of the touch of the son
of the winter, the herald of the dying-times, she can do nothing but know-

Know that the inevitable rebirth will wait until she is frozen, know
that for every trembling step she takes deeper into the fall
that warmth will only reach by the guiding hands of the Sun,
that not all that burns will bring a peaceful light,
that though her song will echo, there is no promise that they may
find any resonation among those that would cherish her, and leave.

To know these things, she carries the light of May,
waiting for the leave of the Autumn and the fall
of an unspoken echo, resounding her song.