Gentians Poem by Roger elkin

Follow your eye through an autumn morning.
Notice mists lingering round fingers of fir, silver wisps
Caught on auburn leaves. Think this garden is September-sad,
Suddenly old with threads of web, the hedge beginning to thin
Though summer’s remnants have come to a head
And Michaelmas is memory of best times past.

Amidst all this, focus on a pull of blues
Striped with skeins of cloud as gentians cling to summer skies.
See them set against the light, like Favrille glass,
Fine and fragile, or mouthing at the sun their heads swelled bells
Like gaudy Christmas balls;
Or at your feet as if peacocks shedding eyes stepped across this grass.

Touching them, feel their skins silky in your hands:
Thins of ribbon, the last-ditch-campaigner’s flash
Of autumn warring against chilling winds.
At dusk, remark their closing, like balloons stolen home from dances
That, after kids have done, sag away to become
Flat blue bags of trash.

Recall, for fifty weeks they retain a memory of blue:
In their roots, in your mind.
Know then how near to you
Fear of darkness reaches out before, behind.