Using form: Susan Jarvis Bryant, ‘To Autumn’
Your flare of red turns Winter’s hoary head
To gaze upon your blaze and feel the heat
And fever of your beat.
Your spice and sizzle catch his breath and spread
Through icy sighs to melt the lick of frost
That dusts the dawn
With hints of chill intent. His plot is lost
In honeyed-apple charm and plummy balm.
You temper smitten Winter’s bitter breeze.
Your foxy bronze and lush rufescent blush;
Your gold and ruby rush
Ignite the leaves that shiver on the trees.
You burn through thickest wisps of morning mist.
Birds laud your glow.
The granite skies grow blue as clouds are kissed
By dreams so hot they thaw all thoughts of snow.
When it’s your time to go you’ll fade with grace
As branches shed their tawny tears of grief –
Each crisp and crinkled leaf
Will pool and pile. As Winter shows his face
Your fluffy, brush-tailed fans will slump and sleep.
They’ll hit the sack
Until they spy the coyest crocus peep –
Spring’s message to the world that you’ll be back!
*****
Susan Jarvis Bryant writes: “My poem is a quirky nod to Keats’ timeless and beautiful ode with a much louder and sassier version of the fall with not a mellow trait in sight. There is no time for mourning loss in this poem. Autumn vows (in true Terminator style) she’ll be back! The form I chose is a nod to the traditional but with two short lines in each stanza – an act of rebellion in keeping with this fiery season.”
‘To Autumn’ was originally published in Snakeskin 321.
Susan Jarvis Bryant is originally from the U.K., but now lives on the coastal plains of Texas. Susan has poetry published on The Society of Classical Poets, Lighten Up Online, Snakeskin, Light, Sparks of Calliope, and Expansive Poetry Online. She also has poetry published in The Lyric, Trinacria, and Beth Houston’s Extreme Formal Poems and Extreme Sonnets II anthologies. Susan is the winner of the 2020 International SCP Poetry Competition and has been nominated for the 2024 Pushcart Prize. She has just published her first two books, Elephants Unleashed and Fern Feathered Edges.
Photo: “Fall Color on the Pond” by fossiled is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
