Adult Poetry - Second Place

Drizzle-drenched spruce
needles, late-season clover
laden with the tiny, quicksilver spheres delivered
from an unforgiving,
galvanized sky.

Asters and goldenrod
crowd the post-and-wire fence,
brazen and oblivious, as if
summer's slow-motion fall
were something to celebrate.

No more hummingbirds
bickering at their crimson
feeder or chiding robins
hop-scotching across the yard.
Another leaf skitters down
the overcast drive, fades away.

Longest nights ahead,
eyes squeezed tight beneath
winter's heavy duvet,
dreading hope might be
gone for good,
like a fugitive sun.