Late Summer, burdened with unseasonal heat
crept through the fading days of her beauty,
complaining like an aged crone
whose shoulders bend under time’s burden.
August winds,chill heralds of the dark days
did not appear to cool the dying season’s fever.

Eyes met and held, desire arced across a weary,
sweating room. A half – smile; then gravitational
attraction pulled me through the clammy crowd.
Standing side by side, hand touching slender hand
we talked, body language screaming louder.
Kisses and whispers in a cab, promises exchanged
wordlessly. Later her dark body strident against
white sheets predicted exotic journeys.

Through weeks of changing, fading colours
and ever shortening days her timeless eyes,
lustrous as chalcedonies and mysterious like
new life that already formed beneath autumn’s
fecund carpet, teased and challenged.


How many times my mouth rested on sienna skin,
kissed lips full and ripe as the season of gathering
and tasting of cinammon and mangoes. How many
times did these pale fingers inscribe passion on her
dark breasts and thighs, contrasts generating warmth
as we sought to keep summer’s diminishing blaze
alive within our multi - coloured couplings.

Winter and death cannot be denied and cold reality
settled on us. Was she too young or I to old?
Perhaps informed by ancient Vedas she understood
what I in western arrogance refused to see;
to stay would have corrupted what was good.
We had our different journeys to make and diverse
expectations of spring that would soon fill the void
left by the passing of love born in my Indian Summer.