Late Summer's Sun
Late summer's sun has baked the grass to brown.
The days grow shorter with each passing day,
Soon, autumn's chill will make the leaves fall down.
All of this aching beauty will decay.
And yet I love the shadow's slanting trace.
The once green grain gone golden in its rows.
And how I love the lines etched in your face.
It's funny, as love ripens how it grows.
The number of our days we do not know.
No sleeper knows if he will ever wake.
So come, let's join above, between, below.
My dear, let's cause our fragile clay to quake.
Let us make love as if it's our last go.
Let us embrace like dawn will never break.
Living in Florida has discombobulated my internal calendar. With none of the old familiar clues, autumn snuck up on me this year. I’ve resorted to flipping through old photos to get a sense of what fall feels like. Here’s a little sonnet from 2015 written when I was spending a lot of time away from home for work, and obviously missing my wife.
P.S.: Psychology Today says that our master circadian clock — the one that keeps track of the seasons is called the Suprachiasmatic Nucleus, which contains about 20,000 nerve cells and is located in the hypothalamus. Gonna have to take their word for it.
Poetic Champions 