September
The jealous maple steals the incandescence
of summer blossoms, which soon disappear,
deferring to the famous luminescence
of fiery trees that light the aging year.
And from warm-weather clouds, fall borrows breezes,
transforming them into a gusty rigor
that forcefully refreshes all it seizes
and soon revives our summer-slackened vigor.
This explication willfully misreads
the facts of chemistry and climate change,
but not the symbiosis of the season:
the metamorphosis of gifts and needs
as summer meets with autumn, to exchange
their wealth in bargains unexplained by reason.
by Jean L. Kreiling, first published in The Lyric 80/4 (Fall 2000): 129.
Editor’s Note: The first line of this sonnet is particularly interesting—personification immediately energizes the imagery of seasonal change.
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