Sonnet written to honour a goddess of autumnal woods
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She hides amongst the leaves of burnished gold,
her shivered word aloft on icy breeze:
a riddle made of astral filigrees,
trailed by dreams enwrapped in copper cold.
She wanders lost in memories of light
remembering the wild abandonment
of dances coarse: lubricious sacrament
to summer's lovers lost to frosty night.
She stops and stands, her softly spoken sighs
emitting warmth enough to start the smoke
of fires first fanned by sylvan pagan folk.
She stops. She stands. A flickering in her eyes.
An ancient bonefire sputters where she stood:
the lady of the golden autumn wood.
