Fall Almost

Summer’s sun thins to cloud and mist,

Sky-blue being washed out to grey,

Faces recently uplifted

Fade and pale and turn away.

Autumn colours quietly arrayed,

Gilded leaves shading to brown

Until gathering winter winds,

With cold fingers, pluck them down.

While she of four score years and ten,

Who’s the last of all she knew,

Accepts now her season has gone,

Feels she’s had more than her due.

There may still be sun yet to come,

But even so, days grow small,

Summer passes to memory,

Then will slip beyond recall.

Dave Alton

Auschwitz Visit (1)

Holocaust can be denied

And that denial

Tattooed

On the sole

Of each shoe

Tossed to the pile

Woven

Through prayer shawls

Stripped

From Rabbis’ shoulders

Wound

Around wire frame

Tangled wire frames

Of glasses

Clouded by gas

Plaited

Into ponytails

Shaved

From bowed heads

Cowed heads

Written

In indelible ink

On imperishable parchment

Hung

At cardinal points

From rolled wire

One word

NO!

All who guard fences

Deny themselves

And say

No

More

Auschwitz Visit 2 - Frescos

Impressed

Two laughing cherubs

Anoint each other

With cornucopias

Of

Immaculate water

Impressed

Aryan youths

Plunge

Through surging surf

On

Wild horse back

Impressed

Two cute kittens

Licking their own paws

To wash

Each other’s whiskers

Impressed

Beneath frescos

Untermensch

Had barking moments

For

Hollow handing

Cold

Unclean water

Over 

Wasted bodies

Over

Brutalist slop-stones

Dave Alton

The Garden

Gardener surveyed the whole garden,

Immaculate fabrication

In constant, flawless bloom. That pair

Tending to this creation

Went about their tasks tirelessly

And without fault. All perfect!

Never did a petal shrivel,

Nor a leaf shed. In fact

Nothing would, nothing could, ever change.

So it was for this reason

Gardener knew dissatisfaction.

Without season on season

What purpose for Gardener at all?

Those diligent underlings

Were mere ornaments without

Challenges only flux brings.

Vivid spring appears so urgent

After winter’s perishing term,

Summer is defined by the fall:

Gardener introduced the wyrm.

                                                                    Dave Alton