ACT III - November

The Brown season opens, with

damp bare branches

and wet leaves

that smoulder in the backyard burn pit,

slow-smoking our clothes, our hair for days.

The miasma of rotting cabbage lingers, 

haunting the empty fields

in the approaching twilight hours

Crickets and cicadas now silent.

Stradivarius stridulations for a moment

sang out the Summer

now put away;

exchanged for this breathless stillness

a waiting 

for the year's dénouement...