The island slows in autumn chill
as herons tip-toe through the marsh.
Red foxes dart, swans thrum, but still
the island slows in autumn; chill
winds carve the emptied beach and spill
salt hints that winter will be harsh.
The island slows in autumn chill
as herons tip-toe through the marsh.

It's a fun concept to write about autumn without bothering to mention decay, but maybe a bit odd since that's obviously what happens in autumn, the most salient fact about it. But then again, Keats placed almost equal emphasis on the abundance and ripeness that we enjoy immediately before the decay, and managed not to mention leaves turning color. And I honestly don't think anyone will ever come close to writing a poem about autumn (or much of anything else) that is as good as this one:

Ode to Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease;
For Summer has o'erbrimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river-sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Michael, that's lovely.

Roger, I can't imagine that anyone will ever write so fondly of gnats as Keats does in S3, either.

Michael, I love your triolet. But tiptoe doesn't need a hyphen. Do you have a title?

Susan

Susan and Julie - Thanks. I grabbed it from a series of triolets on the seasons - A Bouquet of Triolets - on my Hypertexts page. Third stanza. (I changed red sumacs to red foxes to avoid the dammed leaves.)

Third Turn

Fruition. I eschew the race
to beat the creatures who would steal
the makings of an easy meal.
Instead I give them living-space
and hope thereby to gain in grace.
For I have fruit and they have not
so I will share my garden plot
with all small things that come to glean
the secret spaces in between
the softness and the whiff of rot.

Sorry - this cops out in the last line and goes rotty after all...

I’m sitting in my garden in October, and it’s hot,
A glass of whisky in my hand, pure malt, a double shot,
Admiring all the plants that grew from summer’s wanton seeds;
The garden’s green and lush ... the only problem is, they’re weeds.

Autumnal Tang
 

Wild Apples

One autumn day, my mind told me to play
and let our hungry body find its way
to trees with rarer apples fit for picking.

We found a feral orchard strewn with slough,
the apples gnarled, all small and tart and tough.
Their biting tang on lips and tongue was shocking.

Surprised when older, we thought they tasted sweet
and seemed a perfect feast we would repeat—
tamed by time, did apples do the picking?

They sound like crab apples, Ralph. When I was at boarding-school in Sussex, there were loads of them in the surrounding countryside, and the science master let us turn them into cider under his instructions. Of course, we weren't allowed to drink it at school, but I took several bottles home for the Christmas holidays. No other cider has ever tasted as good.

Brian, definitely crabs! Glad the tartness triggered memories of things past.