The Death Of A Kinder Season Poem by Tara Teeling

Nature wears no black
upon the death of August.
Instead, there is
the full colour of an Irish wake,
and the frantic dancing which is
expected at an end-of-world dance.

A gentle sigh of relief,
always follows periods
of intense summer suffering,
as soft, supernal air moves
through yawning windows,
filling sluggish rooms with
the beginning of the end.

Desperate, jaundiced leaves
which have been clinging to drowsy wood
lose their grip, and dropp slowly,
with silent, balletic surrender,
like ghost ships on a ground swell,
giving in to the greater forces.

Frenzied, furious wasps
look for a deathless autumn in the
cratered skin of decaying apples,
warning others, with their ready weapons,
to steer far from these claimed remains.

The air smells of cremation and atrophy,
an indelicate balm which
flaunts no blooming flower,
but is somehow pleasing,
bewitching those who breathe
in the cooling night.

This is when the humans get fat,
when the hunger begins
and the greed takes over
and the other animals are
already sleeping for survival.

There is no distraction,
no contest for attention,
as the anaesthetic heat of summer
has begun to wear off,
and the bellies begin to groan,
kindling bloody cravings.

A crack of gunfire from the lakeside,
and the slow, brown finish
on the failing blades of grass
signal the awakening of the violent season,
and the quiet abdication of a kinder one.

Somehow,
the allure of all this is absolute,
and grief seems improper,
despite the casualties of
this chronic condition.

As there is this death,
it too will be rejected,
and a new kind of season
will graciously take its place.

And so on.