October's Grove

Wandering through a vast blooming meadow
Heat permeates my mind and dampens my skin
When the sun starts to wane on the flowers of summer
When light falls through branches in
A lacy pattern of shadows
I press on through the treeline, to find my long-lost kin 

🍁🍂🍄👻🍁🕸️🦇🦉🍂🍁

Arriving tired and lonely at a brilliant arbor sheathed in vines
Weathered wood dressed in royal purple leaves 
In shimmering tendrils of gold
And open cones dropped from boughs of fragrant pine
Smooth orange pumpkins and warty knuckleheads 
Surround me, stacked up ten gourd high, stretching ten rows deep
Ancient wild apples in a fallow orchard shed at my fleet bare feet

🍁🍂🍄👻🍁🕸️🦇🦉🍂🍁

On hallowed sylvan ground I dare to frolic and tread
Chill prickles my bare skin and flavors the whistling wind
I revel in the shade, and sing to squirrels scurrying over head
The call of migrating geese sounds an eerie track of anxious dread
Through the shower of falling acorns and leaves I find I'm born again

🍁🍂🍄👻🍁🕸️🦇🦉🍂🍁

I dance in the moonlight with the Heralds and the Thrush
Through the frozen mist I witness all manner of hidden beast
The dazzling green man wears a shifting cloak of
Rippling leaves and twisting creepers
Shadowy cats, and witches laugh from behind the falling foliage

🍁🍂🍄👻🍁🕸️🦇🦉🍂🍁

The trail I follow is haunted by the ghosts of hart and hare 
Felled by hunters in the red dawn of autumn’s flare 
Fairies wait eagerly around the edge of October’s sacred grove
Dancing and cavorting with their fellow elven folk
Singing songs to the icy wind, anticipating their offspring’s return
Rejoicing at the sound of children’s laughter in the air

🍁🍂🍄👻🍁🕸️🦇🦉🍂🍁

Owls and ravens hoot and croak a welcoming chorus above
Skies echo and darken, clouds gather in billowing grey plumes
While bats cry overhead and creeping spiders weave their webs
The inhabitants through thicket and over velvet moss roam free
Dry leaves crunch underfoot as I peer out on barren fields

🍁🍂🍄👻🍁🕸️🦇🦉🍂🍁

Harvest bundled and stored in silos beyond October’s grove
Every animal, great and small, must for winter get prepared
I retreat, to shelter in the copse, held tight in autumn’s clasp
A blanket of white keeps me through the long frigid night 
Ushering me into November’s frozen hold
Where I hibernate, dreaming of next October’s golden grove

K.B. Silver

Herald Moth

Thrush

Knucklehead Pumpkin