Floating on a moat,
eyes down and hands together,
towed by inexplicable currents
towards a half-drawn horse-bridge,
in the early evening mist;
a well-suited metaphor
for the dying energy
of the past five months.

The monsters are gone,
but in their absense,
it is easier to hear the echoes
of festivities that now live so far away,
once again foreign to these ears.

The rain has started to fall.
The nights are colder
and the time has been and gone
to end this.

But as the mornings mourn
for themselves,
the green has reddened and browned,
and with an eye cast to the rafters,
there is a starkness
to the empty gray
and its diffused,
seemingly artificial, light.

And so, with door and window bolted,
a storm appears, ready,
and the winter begins.