OCTOBER POEM

Climbing up through the feeble mist, the sun
begins to thaw the hazy ginger land,
casts sunbeams through the beeches on dead leaves:
sublimes their ermine. Pheasants bark and walk
into wet grass. A tractor laced with gulls
ploughs in the valley, turning the fat earth;
and dying bracken, rimed by the sharp night,
looses thin spiral vapours to the air.
A soaring sky of pale, ascetic blue
now circles up and above the hills
and launches on its icy voice
an endless song of winter.