What’s that swimming in your hair,

beneath time, above moon?

 

Goldfish with calico tails, black moors

ending in pleated fans, tiger barbs

 

Perhaps autumn leaves—sweetgum’s shaggy

stars, Japanese maple’s lipstick red, beech’s amber.

 

Or maybe lantana, butterfly weed, Chinese

lantern flowers, marigolds, Blackberry lilies.

 

Clock hands click, pendulum thumps & throbs, 

grey like a winter twilight marches through 

 

tresses, & yet the sleeves of your robe 

sit green, sated with finch song & cicada rattle.

 

What snakes through your hair, 

over time, just under moon?

 

It leaves kookaburra chuckle, hyena warning

cackle, seagull guffaw, crow mirth

 

in its wake.

 

____

~inspired by Pam Hawkes’ “Autumn”