An Ode to Autumn

by Anthony McGowan
September 2022

From the Archives: seasonal poetry by award-winning author Anthony McGowan.

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An Ode to Autumn

Puffed up Autumn ain’t so great:
The cloacal change from green to brown, 
Blue skies turning to wet slate,
The dying back, the falling down.

Fungi bulge with blubber lip 
From sodden logs and rotten stumps;
Beside them, sloughed-off condoms drip:
The limp remains of furtive humps.

Red haemorrhoidal berries droop,
And on the pond a moorhen moans,
And there, some fox shit in a gloop,
Globular with cherry stones.

Outside the church, or just within,
The Harvest festival pile swells;
Ritz crackers and a baked-bean tin,
Toothpaste and sanitary towels.

Plums, poisonous and sour,
Rot and wrinkle on the limb,
Anciently testicular.
Yes, Autumn’s uniformly grim. 

The dreamy advocate of Autumn 
Is generally a vast bullshitter,
Preferring words, empty and solemn
To the actual dank leaf litter. 

So now the old year wipes its feet,
Hunkers down and hugs its knees,
And dreams of Summer’s banished heat
And slowly shrivels up, and dies.

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