In Competition 3374 you were invited to write an ode to autumn. There was bathos amid the beauty. I regret not finding room for Alan Millard’s ‘Season of musts’, Elizabeth Kay’s garden musings, Joseph Houlihan’s paean to the blazing hills, Nicholas Lee on what Keats could do with ‘rotting vapes arranged about the scene’, and this from Anca Gramaticu: ‘a flock of leaves took their flight/ In a roar of applause’. Finally, there’s just space for Daniel Galef’s poem in full: ‘The first leaf that falls –/ That takes balls.’ Those below win £25.
Supposing autumn to be a country doctor
In his vintage russet car and wholemeal tweeds,
Prescribing to both plutocrat and pauper.Splendid reassurance at his brusque arrival,
Attention burnishes his patients and their needs,
Life ripening where there’s doubt of survival.His voice is fruity, his bedside manner easy
A first frost’s clarity he brings to signs he reads:
His diagnoses, Latin gilded, he keeps breezy.Departing, his tail lights show a hopeful glimmer,
As of last light flickering through leaf-stripped trees.
Well past nightfall, at his last call, there’s a shiver.Adrian Fry
Autumn, it’s your turn to shimmy,
To whirl and to skirl, and to settle,
To whistle your way through the chimney,
Like a sudden and untoward kettle –
To dance your erratic mazurka
Down careless, meandering streams
And sometimes, when acting berserker,
And playing your role to extremes,
Throwing gusts with a happy abandon,
So that children are all in a pickle,
Or find that they’ve no legs to stand on –
Ah, you are notoriously fickle,
The season that heats up or freezes,
That suns all the paths in the park,
Before acting up just as it pleases,
To hurry us home in the dark.Bill Greenwell
Season of crisp golden leaves
And hidden dog turds,
Of changing all the clocks,
Of migrating birds.Season of squirrels storing nuts,
And conkers galore.
Of ignoring trick-or-treaters
Knocking at the door.Season of scrumptious berries
Being baked into pies,
Of folk building bonfires
Before burning their guys.Season of cosy dramas,
Strictly starts once more…
We try to guess who’s screwing who
Both on and off the floor!Tracy Davidson
Season of mists and skies of murky grey,
retrieve your jumpers, coats and thermal socks,
it’s time to put the barbecue away
and queue up for your flu jab at the doc’s.
We’ll rake the leaves and ring the local plumber
to clear the gutters too – we’re grieving at
deserted avenues of leafless trees
eclipsing long-lost memories of summer.
Ignore the trick-and-treaters on the mat,
draw down the blinds, turn up the thermostat
and don’t, god’s sake, forget the antifreeze!Sylvia Fairley
Autumn, you may have charmed young Keats to say
Some pleasant words about your fruitfulness,
And who can doubt the colours you display
Make us believe in coming happiness?
But all your promises are cruel deceit;
Your mellowness was never meant to last,
For when you leave we suffer snow and sleet
And feel the chill of winter’s icy blast.
You may sit playfully among your store
Teasing us with the treasures that you bring
But in a few short weeks you’ll tease no more
And winter will forbid your birds to sing.
But what the hell, deceitful though you be,
Perhaps we should enjoy you while we can,
And though you will not last eternally
Let’s love the golden fruit of your brief span.Frank McDonald
The leaves are falling, sodden with the rain,
And worse, the students are all back again,
Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and oversexed,
Intent on leaving me distraught and vexed.
The academic session’s just begun,
Though autumn means the year is nearly done.
Did I say autumn? I meant Michaelmas,
But who keeps up traditions? Now, alas,
Letters that once said ‘Dear Professor A…’
Have turned into e-mails, and what they say
Is ‘Hi!’ Besides, they seem younger each year.
They’re not, of course – it’s me. I rather fear
That starting things in autumn leaves me cold.
The year is fading. I feel just as old.
Their brave new world starts at the Freshers’ Ball,
While I, like autumn leaves, am in free fall.Brian Murdoch
O beautiful Autumn you are wondrous to behold;
With brown and yellow leaves in sums untold,
I summon all the metaphors that I can muster
To praise you for your golden lustre
More beauteous than the spring that comes in May.
More glorious even than Dundee, jewel of the Tay:
You are the greatest season of them all
And in America you’re hailed as Fall.
Alas, though, all the little birds have fled
Except for those too slow and now are dead,
Because your winds came early in October 2024,
And swept them from the branches to the floor.
Your winds blow fiercer than the bagpipes in a ceilidh hall,
Yet I shan’t flee your grasp, for I am most enthrall’d
And as this ode is meant to sing your praise,
I choose to freeze with joy and stand in frosty gaze.Ralph Goldswain
No. 3377: Whose legs?
You are invited to submit a version of ‘Ozymandias’ for the future (16 lines maximum). Please email entries to competition@spectator.co.uk by 20 November.
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