Poem in October

Now it is time in the first breath of autumn
to call to her,
unload on the wind a cluster of sunstorm thoughts –
they pass unnoticed as the leaves skid on.

The sky was far too empty – down came the storm.
Yet I loved her
and though her cold restraint tore summer to bits,
my greenwood strength will be hers in good season.

Now it is time as leaves are falling at random
to call to her,
pile the mad wasted richness on a few words –
and mock the haywire months with a slight song.

It was my last poem for Elizabeth. I had abandoned my work – and I suppose escaped my family – in Glasgow and moved to London. There was much still on my mind. I desperately wanted to write my thesis, and to complete a long poem I had done some initial fragments of at Oxford and Glasgow on the general subject of growing up. Yet I knew all this was out of reach till I had got my feet on the ground somehow. I was far from being anything like an integrated, whole person – but literature helped.