Estival; An Argument for Autumn

              “Now is the winter of our discontent,
                  made glorious summer” 
                                              —  Shakespeare

What is the inclination
to summer love? Spring already
washed away by rains, like lions
and loins frolicking, acts
of procreation passed like so much
gas and dense exhaust, where light
the breezeways of the lungs, filled
with drifting, petaled scents, and
new birth, new life, new wonderment
curled like moss in hidden, dying,
glades.

              What is summer but the searching
for elusive shade? fear of heat and
sweat like icy streams along the spine,
the misplaced valentine of lust
in its grasping one more day, one more
season, when we know it’s already gasped
into pools, lakes, rivers, escaping
hoses, sprinkling hope to coming
droughts.

                  Help me out, here, Fall—
explain the reason for the sun
and all his green, when all I see
is beauty in your softer, subtler
hues, your branches building views
from bridges between his death and winter’s
silence of the snow, your covered arches
set afire by love in its leaving.