Dark Words

Dark mornings, and dark thoughts accumulate like layers of fallen leaves;
Bright spirits so recently sparked by September sun are now dimmed and distant,
And my emotions have mulched into a mush of melancholy and self-doubt.

Well-being has become a Well Being; slumped into a dark pool of stagnant water
Where the hard seed-coating of confidence is rotting away to reveal a soft-centred inner ego.
Unprotected. Vulnerable. Easily squashed.
Maybe there is meaning in this decomposition of disposition;
A biologically necessary strategy to fall back,
To reshape into fragile forms,
Like fungal fruits quivering on the decaying forest floor:
Easily eaten; delicate to damage from passing foot or paw.
But necessary, maybe, for future fertility.

Camping by the edge of the river
I awoke to a world of water:
The air around me thick with mist;
The ground beneath me seeping with moisture.
Above me the steady patter of drops dripping,
But inversely - perversely  -
Only from underneath the canopy trees,
Where leaves filter the water-laden air
And recycle it into tree-rain.

Autumn turns things around.
What was once green and growing, surgent with sap,
Is now yellowing, limp and lifeless.
All that we once had and held within
Is sucked out of us.
But in the dark mornings, amidst the dark thoughts,
Something is festering, fermenting, fulminating...