Poetry Friday: In the Other Gardens

For the last two weeks it seems we have been plunging headlong into fall (okay, not counting yesterday and the day before, when summer put in a sticky, unpleasant curtain call). Oversleeping because the sun isn't up when I get up, running out of evening and needing a flashlight to do evening chores (flustering the chickens, who are smart enough to notice when it starts to get dark . . .). And then, last evening, whiffs of smoke drifted in the window - potent enough to send us into the yard to be sure it wasn't OUR place that was smoldering, but not strong enough to trace to its source. And so on to today's poem, a paean to a bygone era, when we were unwise enough to fill the air with particulate (not that we're much wiser now, filling the air with clean-but-deadly carbon dioxide, but that's a rant for another forum . . . )

From one of my favorite poets: Robert Louis Stevenson

In the other gardens
And all up the vale,
From the autumn bonfires
See the smoke trail!

Pleasant summer over
And all the summer flowers,
The red fire blazes,
The grey smoke towers.

Sing a song of seasons!
Something bright in all!
Flowers in the summer,
Fires in the fall!