To let us get at the point
we often seem to miss, that familiarity
brings contentment, we have autumn time.
Earth is not concerned with experiment,
nor scorning of constancy with maturity,
but lets each year's crop grow
the same as the last and bends the knee
to the habitual, to a beauty that is never marred
and in each dear old flower sees a new worth
that joys in meeting a familiar friend.
We remember the May blossom
snubbing a nose at the past winter
in a mockery of white
while the new shoots of spring,
their heads down, wait to charge.
We love the meadows, green again
as those our ancestors ran in,
and the open-handed flowers that display
a declaration of petals
so the puff clouds of summer can scatter
next year's seeds across the fields.
Though for the moment the hedgerows here
seem lost in a high-grown tangle
of couch grass, briar, dock and thistle,
we know that Autumn's Parthian shot
will fire off a last acclamation of decadent beauty,
that winter will bring a cleansing,
then a beginning, in which familiar frame
our joy will be undiminished.

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