Slowly into autumn goes the ash of life –
fading grey the colors in the shade of season’s strife.
Crack the flesh to wrinkles in these hands next to callous worn.
Creak the bones by years gone by from toil and the laden born.
Cut a life long’s deepest green in shades of rusting red.
Fold the summer’s grasses down, prepare a winter’s bed.
Hush the bird alone whose song in morning rings,
yet listen closely to the verse in what his evening heart does sing.
Touch the river’s stones exposed in autumn’s waning draw.
Feel the naked sense of woods standing still in quiet, raw.
Draw the shadows cast, as long, by sun in autumn sinking.
Embrace the fade and raise a glass to everything your soul is thinking.
Solemn is the musk of woods that color in decay.
Quiet is the rustling hush that whispers through the day.
Somber is the acrid sky that bends a sharper focus,
brings clarity to mind and eye to close this year before us.
Thus by aging hand, this pen upon this yellowed paper,
fits into this autumn’s glove to beg the fade one favor…
“Do drip the honey sweet, of autumn’s red and gold,
grant these calloused crackling hands another page to hold.
Fit your progress slowly that I may see each gold leaf fall.
Grant the sun a warming breath upon my face before the call
of winter so lets in –
Please let me toast this fade again!”
In honor of D. A-Bone
“Toast to the Fade”
jaybluepoems 