Villanelle for a Season's End

Andrew Wyeth

Villanelle for a Season's End

Autumn is here, and summer will not stay.
The season cuts a bloodline on the land,
And all earth’s singing green is stripped away.
Your leaving drains the color from the day.
The oak leaves’ red is clotting in my hand.
Autumn is here, and summer will not stay.
The sea fog settles. Even noon is gray.
The light recedes as though this dusk were planned.
The green of field and tree has slipped away.
I shiver on the beach and watch the way
The berries’ blood is spilled along the sand.
Autumn is here, and summer will not stay.
In the chill air the knotted weed heads sway.
The waves have swept your footprints from the sand.
The green of all our fields is stripped away.
See how the wind has scattered the salt hay
Across the dunes! Too well I understand:
Autumn is here, bright summer will not stay,
And all earth’s love and green are stripped away. 

Luci Shaw 

For those with a melancholic streak, Autumn gives that satisfying mix of beauty and loss to mull over, even savour. I especially appreciate how Luci Shaw writes of the colour draining from the landscape, how the vividness and delineation of things dulls and greys. How we go from singing green to clotting red and foggy grey. And those telling words - "stripped, clotting, slipped, spilled, knotted, scattered, swept" - that sensation of being bereft, of needing to pull one's coat closer around one, is expressed exquisitely.