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Autumn’s Sonnet
Kiss me under the golden linden trees.
High, heavy, they reached to the ochre sky,
Their ribbed arches a cathedral of leaves.
Remember those consummate lips pass by.
Now the leaves have fallen, brown, crackled, dry;
The hyperborean night, no release.
Wings of this darkling thrush do not south fly –
Do the lindens bear it with greater ease?
Spring will come and shroud winter, Autumn’s bloom,
The ripe gourds gone, an Old Man in their place.
Left to freeze, the harvest met its cold doom
And love’s last sigh lingered without a trace.
Next fall’s bejeweling and fattening sun,
Will shine on plump, ripened fruit, not so young.
–Daniel Adler
Daniel the Writer 