Long shadows
this bright November morning.

Sun
picking out gold pieces
hanging
among leaves it ‘s burned
to earth colours:
burnt sienna, ochre,
sombre terra verte.

The feathered silver birches
and fanned corals of the oaks
defined in raw umber
by a draughtsman's pen.

A line of poplars.
Spare skeletons
wearing the tatters of summer's green
on gaunt graceful arms
raised to the duck-egg sky.

A cloud.
Slow-drifting,
turns back its dragon head,
responding to the spiral winds
that play in the high blue spaces
where it formed,
reforms,
changes and transmutes
as, earthbound,
I drive down the motorway.

Janice Windle

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/driving-to-southampton/