A Morning in Late Autumn

William Ruleman

(December 2017)

A film of mist had cloaked the maples, bare
Save for the last gold to defy the ground.
The violet veil that drifted through the air
Enshrouded every tattered tree around.
And I could only stand aghast and stare
Upon a world all shorn of sense and sound—
As stupefied, it seemed, as my own mind,
As shed of certain life, as semi-blind.

Yet by and by some shafts of sun appeared
To cast in clarity the world I know
And raise in stark relief all I had feared:
The thoughts of debts unpaid to friend and foe;
The ways of everydayness, worn yet weird;
The doubts that have no other place to go.
But every gold leaf that still dares to dance
The sun rekindles for a fresh romance.