I do hope that this is not to challenging for our younger poets. I am sure that if they read it out load it will become plain to them. Perhaps they may take courage and accept the challenges that poetry offers them.
The Last Waltz Of Autumn
I walked in solitude beneath trees whose arms and fingers were reft and bare. Who in past seasons nurtured with love, children born of spring’s sun and fed with nature's milk. Now they lay in colorful abandon on that same earth which fed them. They in gratitude do sacrifice their spent lives to repay with their bodies, a life which was given freely to them. So the cycle begins again.
I in my wondering gave no thought to their unselfish sacrifice, but did in thoughtless abandon scatter them beneath my feet, and sent them a merry dance, which to my ear did sound not unlike a maidens skirts as she, with joyful laughter, did whirl in graceful circles to the fluting of the birds.
T'was then I looked behind to view my path, which meandered in uncertain step, where, when childish impulse overtook did kick and scuffle, to send uplifting the colors of an Autumn gavotte. Thus did I unveil a path of dead and decaying memories, of balls that had come and gone in all of the mists of autumns remembered dances.
Aside me arose a hillside of color, the canvas of the painter, who with an artist’s eye mixed pigments of a promised masterpiece. And with a touch of his brush here and a touch there I stood and viewed not the canvas, but a finished masterpiece of reality, and my heart did leap within my bosom.
I felt alive, reborn to a world, not of my making, nor indeed to any man's, but to blessed Autumns creation; the third great artist of the Seasons. She, who must by her own desire, fills her own pictures with the sights and smells of Autumn. Of wood smoke, morning mists and sounds of the sky's feathered creatures migrating to climes unimagined.
Putting all thoughts of solitude behind me, I walked as a young lad, kicking in g*y abandon the sacrificial children of the trees. Sending them once again to a merry dance as I, in youthful impulsiveness joined in the dance to the sound of skirt in merry whirling accompanied by the lyrical music of birdsong, and the chattering of gray squirrel.
And the leaves of Autumn rose in one last waltz at my passing.
www.authorsden.com/robert
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