Dry leaves

We changed rented flats today. It left me feeling sad when I got back to home acres alone this eve. Couldn’t really place the sadness. I’d a whim to write a poem about dry leaves, Robert Frost like, but I realised how honed his voice was to start a poem in that conversational and yet intimate tone, a matter-of-fact familiarity.

I saw two leaves that caught the wind when wondering what to do
Amid the land that in autumn colours
was all found.
And how to tell the hands that the job was through
That winter needed less not more
That where they’d walked back to and fro
There’d be a door and no call for their labouring.
Each year it catches out my heart
And stern outside the orders made
But inside its like dry leaves are laid
Across myself that I must bid them go
And find a berth before the snow
Cloaks all but for the fire at night.
The name is Frost.
I know.
It’s shite.


But I gathered up the dry leaves as night fell.
The rain has made the drought’s disorder seem
An unkempt riverbank or stream
That suddenly says clean up for the nights draw in.
Plant up, bonnie lad. It’s sink or swim.
Two months to let the season make a stand
To still draw succour from your land.
Plant up, wee hinnie, ne’er mind the ache
And harvest up them stanes.
Rake.
Now rake.