Autumn god–a Cento

Photo Credit: sparygraphics.com via Google Images

In every heart there is a god of flowers, just waiting
where the wild asters, last blossoms of the season straggle uphill.

We are the dead. Short days ago we lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow.
Back then, the green grass sprouted and little red flower blossomed.

O world, I cannot hold you close enough. Your woods this autumn,
that ache and sag and all but cry with color, a dazzle dim;

he fathers-forth whose beauty is past change, as when a leaf
or petal is drawn to the falls of a pool, and circling a moment above it

rides over the lip—perfectly beautiful—and is gone.
Death, be not proud.

This is written as a cento in response to the prompt by Sam Peralta over at dVerse Meeting the Bar. The poets I used, with alterations, include Mary Oliver, Jane Kenyon, John McCrae, James Weldon Johnson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Oscar Wilde. Some of the lines are blended.