The Fall of the Leaf
Maurice Lindsay
As I rode home through woods that smelled of evening,
my horse reined up on his intuitive will
and stood, ears cocked, hearing his visible breathing,
the only sound alive this side the hill.
Autumn hung by a silence, swollen full
of the year's roundness. Under spars of dusk
the encircling frost moved stealthily to snick
each brittle stalk and shrivel night's black husk.
As if somehow it sensed it's enemy
the tired air leant against the lingering light,
trembling accumulated scents upon
the rearguard shadows backing the sun's flight.
Torn by the last horizon's hedgerow, strips
of straggled brightness littered the rutted track,
glossing a pack of ragged crows who savaged
hunger's edge with their own caw and clack.
It was as if the shorn and trampled season
bared an epiphany with no savioured parts
for we who hanker after permanence
while boredom and desires burn out our hearts:
until his tenseness splintered in a whinney,
acknowledging a cue I could not hear,
and anapaesting down his instinct's treason,
his hoofbeats thumped a rhyme of fear and dare.
