The Lights of August

I light a lamp to watch the summer fade

The purpling heavens light their lamps in kind

In August’s final breath is autumn made

Her dewy blush with destiny entwined.

A hundred lanterns on a river borne

With history burning in their golden lights

And August comes to honor, not to mourn

Our august forebears in the dream-dripped night.

So stars align, then part, then realign,

And summer comes, and leaves and comes again,

And lantern-like she rides the streams of time

For every maiden’s dewy blush must end.

Fear not the season’s golden symmetry

For ancestors we all one day will be.