a funereal pallor drapes the garden,

a cemetery littered with unburied

mourners that once shared my long

summer salad days,

 

gone the mottled warmth, the heady scents

children’s musical laughter too,

all must now pay the season’s price,

prone, sacrificial, destitute,

 

newly frosted blooms stare down, passive

in lichen-licked terracotta pots,

ghostly, white-faced, shocked stiff

vague helpless beauties of yesterday,

 

coppered leaves no longer dance between

barren stems, but hang crucified by the

sudden chill, like hapless fish in

spider-knitted cobweb nets,

 

 

I walk amongst them, giving thanks

now cold colourless brittle tombs

there is no life amongst these slatted

shadows, no pulse, just the smell of death

 

© GRS 9/24