Phil Vernon is our treasurer, and this poem was published in the Society’s Folio # 72 in 2018. It is included in his recent collection, Poetry After Auschwitz (Sentinel).
No Guarantee Overnight, the valley's turned. Its trees and hedges, wearied by the endless summer days, have spurned their tender murmuring for dry- as-paper rustling in reply to breezes brushed with leaf more rare than gold, beneath a cloudless sky - a beauty he can hardly bear. he sees leaves fade then fall; then bare limbs silhouetted under rough storm clouds; then spring - all he can know is how their scent suffused the air, the feel and soft sound as he scuffed through dampened drifts, lifetimes ago.
The Kent & Sussex Poetry Society 