August, the robin swaps its song
to this slow bluesy tune signalling
summer is slipping through my hands.
Not that I have squandered each day’s glut of light.
Doors and windows have been left open
until evening inks the sky.
We have scrambled the bike at a moment’s notice
blasting off down to the coast.
Plums and cherries have been gorged on before
their season’s small window slams shut.
I have stuffed the garden with flirty ‘Hot lips ‘
whose tiny red lip- sticked flowers part to French kiss bees.
Now the wintry mood that was stashed away
with woollies in May, stirs. I have no love for Autumn,
regard it as an arsonist putting a torch to trees
that are burnt out by November.
And even less for Winter when we must adjust again
to a life squeezed into shrunken days.
You have already entered next year’s holidays
and events in the diary with bold black print.
Whereas I have learned to only pencil in the future.

Fiona Sinclair’s new collection Second Wind will be published by Dempsey and Windle Press. Her poems, which are broadly autobiographical, deal with the possibilities of later life; from learning to ride pillion on a motor bike to falling in love again. She is also very open when writing about health issues especially depression. She lives in a village in Kent UK with a great many books and a feral garden that she battles with every year.