Autumn Song - Will Cookson

Sunday morning, she’s still asleep and breathing soft

Awoken by the kettle whistle

Send from the distant moss-hung keep to the drowsy croft

A prayer my flower won’t become her thistle

As I train my fingers to the steel to bring us luck

And now she’s found my weakness

She’s in my heart and in my dreams and in my waking up

She’s in the clay and the landscape drawing on my coffee cup

Bleary-eyed, the dawn birds sing their songs of love

Looking for someone to hold them

Free from all our aimless thoughts they fly above

Like us just doing as Mother told them

In leaving footprints in the lawn when the dew drops freeze

While the world keeps spinning

She’s in the keen touch of the frost and the wind that moves the trees

She’s in the smoke from the bonfire burning up the autumn leaves

I numb my fingers in the steam, watch the dog run away

From safe behind my window

I think up rhyme to keep us calm and fill the day

Now she’s in each vowel and consonant of every word I say