Equinox

There are slowed and different days when woods

become their death colour, brilliance of red and gold

and orange shining, all fatally crisp.

Life hunkers at root as stretched nights etch

into afternoons and fire happens in fields,

on gorse where game cocks hid their mating shades,

here where summer turns back from its border,

the loch edge littered with autumn clutter, reflections.

For seventy years I have noted the changes, have loved

burnings and drownings, the snap and shatter

of leaves underfoot. Now they appal in awareness

of winter; the halt at the solstice no longer appeals

when all fades fast in the coaxing cold.