There’s a frost warning tonight.
And I will take the secateurs in hand,
And cut down the tropicals,
Bourgainvilliae and Mandevilla,
Still blooming as they might
On some tropical island.
It makes me sad
Which is foolish, silly perhaps,
Since this ritual is inevitable,
As unavoidable, as the fall and winter that follow,
As the shortening days.
Already the sunlight blanches
In the morning and evening
And the sun stands lower in the south at noon.
I try not to follow the passing of the years
But my time is shorter each hour,
Before I too will be cut down by the secateurs
Of inevitability and not pass a cool dark winter
In a kind of hibernation, as the plants do,
To grow again when happy spring returns.
This makes me feel sad, too,
And similarly foolishly,
But humanly.
Copyright 2023 © David S. Fawcett
