Poetry Friday: "Sonnet 10"

Y’know…now that I think about it…

I should’ve come up with a title for this poem.

For some reason, I just never got around to it.  I wish I could find the original, which had the date of completion on it (I’m sure it’s packed away somewhere around here) but I’d guess that I wrote this around 2000.  We were living in Highgate, Vermont, at the time and I was home on the front porch, looking at the field across the road and the line of multi-colored trees that stretched behind it.  I think it was late September, but it must have been a cool, early fall because I recall the trees had already lost at least half of their leaves, which spurred me to write this.

It’s an adult poem, never published, but one of my favourites; I hope you like it.  For more poetry, please visit Laura Salas for the complete Poetry Friday roundup!

Sonnet 10

The dark green trees, so tender yestermonth,
Have now begun a turn of gruesome hue
And sanguine shades make manifest a life
With which the leaves the sun cannot imbue.
Where once youth’s shine had bourgeoned through these hills
And sweetness of the air perfumed the land,
Now sullen limbs hang low, with fingers crack’d
As if by Hodur’s cold and mighty hand.
The souls come creeping, seeping through worn skin –
An erubescent glow becomes a cry
To Heaven; stately corpses standing tall
Are beckoning us all to watch them die.
And while tears drop so silently to ground,
To tread upon them ‘tis a deaf’ning sound.

- Matt Forrest Esenwine

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