Autumn Sonata

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

(Photo taken from the Internet)

For me, September is the start of autumn…whatever the weather people or the almanacs say.

Here’s my favourite autumn villanelle. It was first published in an anthology, Seasons of Change, Anchor Books [Forward Press] 2003 and subsequently in my collection.

Villanelles are not as easy to write as they look. Regular readers will know I have a passion for them and won’t be surprised to learn that I have written 200+. I try to vary style and content in my poetry and am always experimenting with voices. Even so, the villanelle remains a firm favourite of mine if only because its simplicity is far from simplistic and I get a sense of achievement from keeping to the discipline it imposes on a poet. Feedback suggests that some readers love them and others hate them, which is as it should be.

Left entirely to my own devices, I am inclined to waffle and have even been known to mix my metaphors. Oh, dear! Now, villanelles clear my head. They keep the inner eye focused on the straight and narrow if multidimensional paths along which a poet loves travel across uncharted territories of the mind, hopefully with his or her readers for company at various stages of the journey.

AUTUMN SONATA

Silvery grey skies,

leaves drifting,

summer closing its eyes

Lighting home fires,

hopes flaring

silvery grey skies

Holiday goodbyes,

wishful thinking,

summer closing its eyes

Words to the wise,

softly treading

silvery grey skies

With long, wistful sighs

and daydreaming,

summer closing its eyes

Time quickly passing,

our hopes surprising

silvery grey skies,

summer closing its eyes

[From: The Third Eye by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2004]