Autumn Musings
pepperminting/Pixabay
AUTUMN MUSINGS
A commotion of yellowed leaves seen falling,
some chivvied this way, some chivvied that
by some swirl in the entropy
on the far side of yonder.
They litter my pathway
with their browning corpses
they scent the airs autumn,
and seasoned with chestnuts, sloes and red haws,
and with magical mushrooms
that grow overnight
down there in detritus, the components of spiders
and the chitin elytra of
beetles long dead,
and the snapped bone fingers of mouldy twigs
and with hard winter’s rain
they compost the summer,
turning midden to sustenance
to nourish the filigree
that laces the soil
from mountains to moorlands
in a neural net
that whispers and plots
below my feet.
And overhead,
through a view in the canopy
opened up by October,
against a stern grey skyscape,
imperturbably sanguine it seemed to me,
sea gulls, all trifled with; in disarray,
are blowing through,
trimming, veering and trimming anew;
It’s tricky to work with,
this mischevious westerly.
I tramp through the landscape
as a witness, a weaver,
making warp and weft of the ten thousand threads.
I am now old and slow,
I won’t need to remember
for so very long
but still I journal and twice underline
and consider a tat,
whatever, just never, let me forget…….
but yet…….!
Alan Martin
Carw November 2025
Alan Martin is a Pembrokeshire native who has worked in several UK locations as an engineering inspector. He now lives on a smallholding in mid-county with his wife and son
