The Watcher of the Waning Year
Where whispers weave through wheat and willows wide,
There dwelt a soul whose vigil never swayed—
The Observant of the shifting, fleeting tide.
His eyes, a glass to Time’s elusive face,
His heart the compass to the ceaseless dance,
He marked the seasons’ slow, ordained embrace,
And traced the measure of their brief expanse.
The dawning breathed upon the vernal leas,
Where newborn green did stir in earth’s warm clasp;
The songbirds’ hymns adorned the nascent breeze,
As blossoms stretched in dawn’s awakening grasp.
He walked amidst the field where dew was spun,
Each tendril gleamed like threads of liquid light,
A murmured ode to cycles just begun—
The soft refrain of Day outwresting Night.
“O fleeting hour,” he mused with quiet grace,
“What secrets lie within thy transient waltz?
Thy beauty mocks the ceaseless onward chase,
While mortal pulses yearn, and time exalts.”
The brook he traced, its laughter pure and fair,
Its voice a silver chord ‘neath bough and stone,
“Your dance,” he said, “a mirror, if I dare—
Reflecting all the nights I spend alone.”
Summer’s breath then swelled with fervent flame,
And ripened fruit hung heavy ‘neath sun’s gaze;
The land, ablaze with life, no time to tame,
Within its grasp, a fierce and golden blaze.
The watcher roamed amid the amber grain,
His shadow long beneath the blazing dome,
In every stalk and leaf, the birth and pain—
The tender nets that most imprison home.
“Here dwells a pyre of moments, swift and bright,
A blaze that blinds, then fades to embered gray;
O Nature, in your endless, burning light,
Do you lament the loss of yesterday?”
He paused where sunbeams danced on rippling streams
And summoned forth a silent, yearning sigh—
“Is time but noise within a realm of dreams,
That blurs the earth beneath the changing sky?”
The autumn wind, a herald crisp and cold,
Unfurled its banners tinted rust and gold;
Leaves pirouetted down in whispered flight,
As twilight spilled its amber, waning light.
He, stationed ‘neath the boughs now barer, stark,
Observed the earth withdraw her verdant dress,
Each falling leaf a testament, a mark—
To cease, to fade, to honor death’s caress.
Within his breast, a stirring, subtle ache—
The mortal pulse, attuned to nature’s song,
Reminded him that all must bend and break,
That all who wander here must not belong.
“My muse,” he spoke, “speak now: is it despair,
Or artful grace that guides the final bow?
When time’s swift scythe lays beauty bare,
Do quiet ends beget beginnings now?”
The bitter breath of winter’s steel embrace
Descended soft upon the slumbering plain;
White shrouds the earth in solemn, coldened lace,
And silence hums a slow, suspended strain.
The watcher stood where ancient oaks lay bare,
Their naked limbs etched ‘gainst the pallid skies,
His gaze cast far, through frost-enshrouded air,
Seeking the spark where hidden promise lies.
His voice, a tremor in the frozen hush,
Whispered, “Though ice may bind the fertile ground,
Beneath the stillness, life renews its rush,
Though muffled, yet profound, its pulse is found.”
He bent to touch the frost with careful hand,
And found the splendor in the brittle seam—
A silent covenant that time had planned:
From endings, births emerge as in a dream.
When morning came, the fields began to thrum
With tender hints of greening, breathing earth;
The watcher’s soul felt ancient rhythms drum—
The ceaseless march from death unto rebirth.
He knew, though seasons spun their endless round,
No final chapter tamed the rolling tale;
Each cycle turned in harmony profound—
A timeless dance where hopes and shadows sail.
So paused he then, where meadow meets the wood,
Between the realms of Spring’s first brooding light
And Winter’s chill that veils the slumbering brood—
Between the day and ever creeping night.
His heart, a ledger of the moments passed,
Yet held no hand upon the final page;
For in the turning dance of seasons cast,
The future whispers still from age to age.
“O Time,” he breathed, “thy secrets still elude;
Thy fleeting steps, a pattern undefined.
No mortal eye may pierce thy shifting shroud,
Nor grasp the contours of thy fleeting mind.”
He stepped into the light—a figure lone,
A silent witness to the ceaseless throng;
And with the wind, his whispered thought was thrown—
A question carried on the endless song:
What waits beyond the circle’s edge of green?
What story sleeps beyond the closing door?
The watcher lingers in the in-between,
Between the now, the never, and the yore.
And thus the fields, beneath the whispering sky,
Remain a tome unbound, the tale unsaid—
Where seasons turn, and moments fall and fly,
And Time’s great watcher walks his path ahead.
