AUTUMN LIGHT
by Trevor Hewett

Summer fades; the first cool Northern air
sweeps, like hatred, through shorter days,
August heat now gone elsewhere,
to Southern, bird-filled coasts and bays;

leaving constricting vales of cloud
that shield a liquid Autumn sun
that once beat down on an empty plain
and may again. And may again.

Some of these skies stir memories that leave me bare -
of lost days in a tranquil lane, long gone,
where the golden, evening light lay everywhere
and, across quiet fields, the Atlantic shone.

Like you, my childhood's in my head
and lives, though peopled with the dead.

Here, now, as Autumn evenings fall,
I, unfailingly, recall
that certain qualities of light
have the strange kinetic power
to remove me from tonight,
bear me down a tunnel of hours
to other times, older days
and memories of simpler ways,

to sunny evenings with liquid shadows
sliding over a stubbled field
as I watched through the coloured glass
of the cottage window. Or, I kneeled

on the sill to peer at the shining sea
and, closer, geese at the garden gate;
and the grey-brown earth of the lane outside
and a broken out-building of ragged slate.

Now, across the narrow, urban valley,
lighted windows appear like stars
in peoples' homes, and a beige half-moon
climbs into view; the sounds of cars
and an acrid smell of burning leaves,
a barking dog, somewhere a train.

And a growing whisper from the trees
reminds me of approaching rain.

Trevor Hewett is an Englishman who lives and writes in his native Cornwall. Published widely in the UK and internationally, he has a short collection of work - 'The Patchwork Woman' - available from Mockfrog Design Press, Australia -- AND a new collection 'Drift' available right here at KotaPress!!! Check it out in our eStore.