All around the village today

Autumn masters its symptoms 

And forges them into a frown

Loitering leaves consider

Whether the moment has come

To spend seconds in free fall

Or to cling on

Until the silent signals manifest

And cause the leaf to dance

It has become too obvious

As I walk my regular way,that

The magnificence of russets

Of ochres, of burnt oranges 

Evolves now only

Into this damp sludgey squib of a season

A time of withdrawal 

Of broody mooding

Of sofas and blankets

Of not moving much

Of reminiscing of summer skinny dipping

And long glances across the wet rock edges

To that beautiful bear of a man

Who glanced also

And stirred the summer breeze

That caught my breath so tight

And I, like the leaf considered 

The adrenalin of freefall

Of surrendering to the correlation 

Of summer 

And its heady convincing lies

This man was offering here

To me in a single glance

The chance to come unhinged

The notion of lythe limbs

Of course I shouldn't look again

Because Summer makes fools consider equations

When all that I could offer really

Was the certain square root of naught