Autumn

Now mornings have that bitter smell of school  -
new uniforms, and geometry sets  -
the things you’d thought were drowned deep in the pool
of growing up.  But when the silver nets
of cobwebs string the bus stop back it comes:
that nervous chill.  Childlike, you can’t resist
the polished conkers or the windfall plums,
or lobbing acorns with a school-boy’s twist
to ricochet off lamp-posts.  Apples hang
ripe for the stealing, full of grubs and worms.
New timetables;  new rituals;  new gang.
The concentrated taste of autumn terms
comes back, intensified, reminding how
the harvest festival exotic fruits
rotted so fast  -  and it’s no different now,
when everything’s returning to its roots.