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“…And I rose In rainy autumn And walked abroad in a shower of all my days…” How I love those lines from Dylan Thomas’ magnificent “Poem in October”. On the first rainy, cooling, leaf-blown October day each year – that’s today, where we live! – I dig out my battered old copy of Thomas’ Collected Poems to read “Poem in October” to myself, whilst gazing out of our third floor window into the Botanic Gardens below, just beginning to unfold its autumn glory.

This year, I also have the pleasure of presenting a new, vibrant autumn poem, Mabon Moon, from Scottish poet Carole Bone, whose work I have featured several times before on this blog. Carole’s poetic senses express themselves visually as well as verbally; I’m delighted to be accompanying the poem with some of her autumnal images.

Woodland Sprite

And the optional fairy? Chainsaw Creations have just recently spirited her into delightful Cairnhill Woods, near Glasgow, Scotland, UK, where Carole takes many photographs. “If you go down to the woods today…”

MABON MOON

Gaudy Summer fades.

Autumn ignites the soul

With fingers of fire

Lusty red and purple berries

Shamelessly plump!

Bejewel her slender branches

With wanton abundance

She scatters fruit and seed

Consummating the fertile earth

Soft mist and wood smoke

Spices cold sharp air as

The Mabon Moon arises

Like a ripe orange, sits

On a basket of naked branches

Crazy paving the October sky

Slowly she drops her gown

Of smouldering scarlet and gold

Fiercely blushing in coy embarrassment

Season of sensuous knowledge

Voluptuous in velvet colour

Honeysweet in her decay.

N.B. Says Carole: “In Pagan or Wiccan tradition, Mabon is the mid-harvest festival at the Autumn Equinox when we honour the changing seasons. It is a time of giving thanks for the things we have, whether abundant crops or other blessings. The full Moon after the equinox is called the Mabon, Harvest or Hunter’s Moon.”