A jar of autumn to trade…

I love these quiet early autumn evenings, blank verse all around, words tumbling from each and every direction to subtly rhyme long after the moment’s past.

So softly blue then quick-to-yellow-pink skies. A chill in the air and the smell of last-life leaves. That whiff of over-ripening and almost rotting fruit. These are the evenings when I want to whistle. There’s a resonance to the air, not quite an echo, shrill and sharp, a birdsong in the still. On these evenings a whistle moves a long, long way – who knows where it could settle.

Plants are coming to an end, leaves begin to fall. Down by the bowling club a rogue hop plant has run amuck creeping across the pavement. Small beer in the scheme of things - a single snap of cold and it’ll be gone - but for now a dream of foaming winter ale.

Up on the park the first dead leaves have fallen still. Reaching deep in my pocket to fill my jars - brown and yellow and red, to cut to hearts an autumn shred.

High in the spreading chestnut tree the conkers are coming despite the tree’s brave green. By my measure the first brown nut will drop, bounce, and be stringed, before this month is out. Low mist above the wetted grass this morning - white and wispy, playing hide and seek in corners, trying hard to avoid the coming sunshine and a vanishing.

Not a butterfly in days and quiet bees. Just when did I last hear their busy buzz or see a flutter of red? Have they gone already in early autumn days? And my yard littered with nasturtium seeds, small and wrinkled like shrunken heads - last limping flowers fade from brilliant orange to puce, so soon to fall and turn to wither.

Oh, if only I could catch this in a kitchen jar or two - this early autumn feeling. I’d take them down from my secret shelf to smell the last of this year’s warmth in the coming cold and winter’s evening.

If only I could jar this early autumn, press down the silver lid, pop in the cork - and sell it on in Boots or even Sainsbury’s. What a trade that would be.

I’d make my starry fortune for sure.