Restless Autumn by Richard Martin

The calendar announces that autumn has begun,
although the trees, the true harbingers of the season,
have not yet got the message – they remain green,
apart from the chestnut‘s skeletal fishbone branches
with their handful of crumpled paper leaves,
due more to sickness than the season.

Only the winds sending gale force shudders
through twigs and leaves seem truly seasonal –
however, the agitation of piled up leafy cushions
only narrates the foreground story of unrest;
far away on the skyline stolid arboreal regiments
resist the wind‘s determined advances.

Here, neither mists nor mellow fruitfulness,
only the occasional russet or yellow leaf
fluttering uncertainly on the fruitless cherry tree.
The magpie in its erratic flight, swooping,
diving, skimming from fir to beech and back,
is the true image of autumn in its restlessness.

Richard Martin is an English writer who lives in the Netherlands close to the point where Belgium, Germany and Holland meet. After retiring as a university teacher in Germany, he turned his attention to writing, and has published three collections of poetry and numerous poems in magazines in England, the US, and Austria.