Etude 1

Watch the way the words come tumbling 

ink upon the page

Just to think in script descrying 

patterns of an age

Wet your pen, and whet your whistle 

cast your fancy where it may

Bleeding heart, by thorn and thistle 

torn, runs on to play

Waxing all affected, 

waning like the moon 

of late, love comes home rejected

ends the talk so soon?

Lest, thinking some other thing 

to talk of ere the cadence fall

The tongue, still young that learned to sing 

when age has come, said naught at all

Five years' decay

 Five years’ decay 

  dusty textbooks

  and angry mobs on TV

Giving in, getting loaded 

  and fat, wasting two 

  thousand noons in self-

  reproach, saluting the

  flag I once would have

  burned, just to resist 

  a tide I helped set

  in motion, silent as

  the moon on a summer

  night

Now Autumn is upon us, 

  open skies uncluttered

  by leaves, the bright

  November sun revealing 

  everything as it always was