Autumn Emptiness

Within this season full of low and snaking smoke,
this quartered age of fire and churning light,
Demeter’s bane,
this time of yellow mellowing of every willow bough
and aching shadow on the bracken and the sere,
this liming time for hedgerows
and the apple tree,
Oh  let her come to me
again.
My hearth, my heart is cold.