CHAPARRAL FALL

Summer’s heat glazes 
The landscape in shellac:
Dying thistles and grasses
Are Swaddled in a veil of sepia. 

It’s Fall in the Chaparral
Season of senescence:
The dead and the dying
‘Midst the last blooms of Spring.

Revenant bush sunflowers
And Spring’s last gasp, Acourtia 
That like funeral offerings
Form bowers for the dead…

Yellow and pink wreaths
Tossed on the funeral pyre
That daily consumes
Winter’s rampant progeny. 

June’s gloom gone
The way of May grey
‘Tis no longer a season of mists
And mellow fruitfulness…

But a harsh biotic desert
Braved only by those hardy
Sclerophytes, inured to sun
Parched earth and abrading wind.

Under the blistering orb
The dwarf forest persists
Determinedly awaiting
November’s rains…