Autumn Angling

Isn't this the time of year when one could gaze in endless wonderment, as Nature, frantic in the final closure of autumn, braces itself against clear harbingers of wintry days to come? 
The sky itself cannot decide whether it is dusk or dawn, so sulks in broody, neutered shades of indecisive silver grey...

The air is not still, but bursting with a cacophony of hurriedness:  every corner of the woods is filled with the alarmed flapping of wings large and small:  a conspiracy of crows, buffered hither and thither by icy gusts,  paint themselves perfectly across the tea-stained canvas of a faded autumn's afternoon, their cries and plumage scattering in some desperate race against time.  Tiny whizzing robins explode as bursts of crimson from amongst the general dung brown.  Tufted ducks V-line themselves to manoeuvre a final dive bomb upon frosted lagoons. Snowy gannets and coppery Egyptian geese both cut wide arcs as they plot their winter escape, vying for lofted elbow room as they bicker and beat about each other.  All wingéd creatures seem hell bent in their hickledy headlong journey after a firmly departing sun.

I stand shivering betwixt cold and colder still,  cowering under golden boughs whose final leaves, now totally crackled with thirst, click clack tumble like so many pinballs through the frame of deadened branches, ruffling fresh-emptied nests along their downfall, and startling fish in still ponds below.  

Sniffing faint odours of gunpowder in the dimming atmosphere,  I gather the poppy scarf about my neck, and search in vain for a remembrance of these woods in a gentler season: my cold limbs ached for the caress of warm breezes under burning blue skies.  I scowl at the howl of rising gales, willing night not to fall before I hook that elusive rainbow buried deep within the lake.  But the north wind dismisses me, catches my sigh and turns it into a pale white ghost.  As I retrieve my final, fruitless cast, I meet the gaze of an unrequited, muslin-wrapped half moon above.  We both admit defeat: time marches on, towards moon's rounding of its corners, and towards sun's endless nights of deepest slumber.