Waning Moon

For Kerry’s prompt on Toads: a poem by Rupi Kaur, using the reference: ‘fill the empty parts… We are to write a micro-poem of 10 lines or fewer.  This is also posted for Open Link Night at dVerse Poets Pub.

Waning Moon
“Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.”- George Eliot

the moon is at one percent illumination today –
darkness is almost total – am owl glides invisible through the night.
summer is winding down and in the cornfields the stalks’
drying leaves rustle in the wind –
I wait for autumn to fill me with apples
and frost, with clear blue skies
and the last tomatoes from the vine.
tiny sweet smelling blackeyed susans
and the burrowing cicadas fill me with music.
I want to be filled with autumn again.

sunt lacrimae rerum

dead cicada lies
under fading crepe myrtle.
I stand. lone mourner.

Equinox 11:58 p.m. 12:06 a.m.

Warm air

Like bathwater.

Dog day cicadas susurrate.

The woods are silent and dark.

Green smell of grass

Seems to fade.

I feel the seasons changing.

A coolness brushes my cheek

And crickets begin their sawing.

Cicadas fall silent as they burrow

Into the earth.

Subtle but detectable change.

The spicy smell of maple leaves

And dried pine needles:

Brown smell, no longer green smell

In the air.

My pulse quickens.

The lethargic breeze of hot humid summer

Leaves my body

And is replaced by

The quicker breath of

Autumn wind.

So still I stand

The heavy dew of autumn

Coats my hair

And clothing.

I shiver but the shiver

Is the uncomplicated cool of autumn

And not the hostile shiver of winter

Nor the slight vibration of summer.

Summer sighs and goes to sleep.

Autumn awakens.