POETRY JAM - EYES

“Unless a tree has borne blossoms in spring, you will vainly look for fruit on it in autumn.” - Walter Scott

For this week, Poetry Jam has given a prompt relating to eyes, with the directive: “This week I would like you to write a NEW poem about eyes. A mother’s caring eyes. A father’s stern eyes. A child’s innocent eyes. A lover’s warm eyes. Eyes of God. Cold eyes. Open eyes. Closed eyes. Squinting eyes. Blind eyes. Inner Eye…”

Here is my contribution, keeping in mind that Autumn is coming to us who reside in the Southern Hemisphere:

Coming of Autumn

The rose was bled

And now it languishes,

Wilting, pallid, lifeless

Propped only by the collar of the vase.

The summer’s dead, its blue eyes

Forced shut by an autumn

Prematurely reigning –

Heat drowned by drizzle.

My eyes extinguished,

Are overcome by the opium

Of your memory;

Its presence strong, although illusory.

How can the frozen heart thaw

In autumn’s chills and icy rains?

How can even a sanguine libation

Revive the wilting rose?

No! – Coals of eyes cannot by fantasy’s

Cold fires be rekindled.

So I abandon me, in Fall’s grey skies,

A leaf unwilful, tossed by icy winds.

So I surrender me to a fading, wilting,

Premature exsanguination

And yield, succumbing me

To what fate has writ.