POETRY JAM - HARVEST TIME

“Every age yearns for a more beautiful world. The deeper the desperation and the depression about the confusing present, the more intense that yearning.” - Johan Huizinga

This week, Poetry Jam has the theme of “Harvest Time”. This is to coincide with the Northern Hemisphere season of Autumn, which begins with the autumnal equinox on September 23, 2014. My contribution looks at the topic figuratively rather than literally…

Autumn Harvest

The days are pale, and their shortening foretells a rapid death.
Cool winds forebode wintry chills,
While gathering rain clouds signal the end of a sultry summer –
The harvest of sorrow watered with tears is awaiting to be gathered.
The seeds of bitter pain ripen
And fruit of misery hang heavy on the vines of woe.
The sickle of unrelenting duty is sharpened
Ready to slice through dry and twisted grasses of desolation.

How hope has been deluded,
How every expectation hollow has become,
How dreams of rich harvests have turned to nightmares.
The seasons of joy have passed us by, unnoticed
And now that the winter of misery approaches
How can we not be cut to shreds
By its ice-cold sharpened claws?

I gather my melancholy harvest of despair
Pick fruit of poison, collect each seed of pain
Knowing that in the winter solitude that I must face alone
Such as my harvest is, it will feed my shattered life
Helping me to evade death, if only to await
For new sprouts of dejection in the next phantom spring.

The image above is “Autumn melancholy day” by_mckatalyn