Autumn (Free Verse Sonnet) Poem by Gert Strydom

(after I. D. du Plessis, in answer to N. P. van Wyk Louw)

Motionless like skeletons the branches hang stripped, the summer is past,
the air is stuffy and the clouds are grey and black and heavy,
the wind rustles through the dry earth grabs here and there a leave,
etched against the dark sky stands the gigantic oak trees in a long row
where you get an impression of the eternal waiting of trees,
of the winter that is coming with the first chill of the fall
but still the doves do sing their love songs where they do woo
when swarms of other birds do trek away to avoid the iciness,
where the sun does break through at place after place but still hangs dull dying,
the oaks gleam dull black, do gigantic stick their fingers into the sky,
while the grassy veldt yellow-brown do stretch into the distance
when a person does long back to the fruitful days of summer
and do find God in the silence of the resting time that suddenly does come
when the first snow does cover the peaks of the Hottentots Holland Mountains.

[References:"Herfs" (Autumn)by I. D. du Plessis."Vroegherfs" (Early Autumn)by N. P. van Wyk Louw.]

© Gert Strydom