As passing summer extends its handshake to the autumn,
And the mellowness of featherlight October sun
Paints its hues of light and shade in watercolour wash
Across the rolling hills, the spreading fields, the surrounding woods.

Blue skies - grey clouds - sweet winds -
Embrace our horizontal world.

Only Hound Tor,
Its crags, its mighty bulk,
Nature carved in stone, silent statues,
Faces, gnarled heads, protruding noses,
Stands unchanging, sits invincible.

Skylarks serenade sweet symphonies;
Crows croak chattering conversation.

As I stop to perch upon a boulder,
Surrounded by bracken and cushions of grass,
Serenaded by the sweet song of the lark,
My eyes wander all around
And swim across oceans of golden gorse.

The last beech leaves of summer by the roads,
The last rowanberries,
Twinkling jewels on bare branches,
Preparing for their golden twilight,

As I pluck upon the strings
That are the music of the moor.

Written in October 2002, another of my open-ended sequence of Dartmoor (Devon, UK) poems, a celebration of the onset of autumn