Poem: First Equinox
The seasons, one into another, inspire this week’s Poet’s Corner contribution from Alana Potgieter.
First Equinox
It creeps up softly
the autumn equinox:
those first refrigerated morning breaths
that catch in your throat as the backdoor locks
the surrounding noises sounding nearer still
the first taste of approaching winter’s chill
The low ground-hugging early mist
Jack Frost’s Austral cousin starts his shift
steals across the still-brown fields that flank the freeway
then dissolves into forgetfulness with the climbing morning heat,
summer’s defeat is written in the day
soon winter will have its way.
In my rearview mirror rises snow-globe-like
the miasmic white corella flocks
I hear their chorus ha-ha ring in
the awaited changing of the clocks
while the soil unbends its hot-baked hardness
and the diurnal tide stops
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That night I raise my glass to toast
the passing of the season we seem to love the most
the setting summer sway
the softening of the light,
I bid farewell to the diminishing day
and embrace the lengthening of the night.
Alana Potgieter is an avid gardener and devoted cat mother who has naturalised to Adelaide from South Africa.
Readers’ original and unpublished poems of up to 40 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to [email protected]. Submissions should be in the body of the email, not as attachments. A poetry book will be awarded to each accepted contributor.