The ash-grey sky, a vault of bitter gloom, Hangs low, oppressive, sealing the tomb Of verdant summer’s fleeting, fragrant mirth; Now leaves, like embers, crumble into earth. ![[The_ash-grey_sky_a_vault_of_bitter_gloom_Hangs_low.image.jpg]] I ache for what I know I cannot name— A tender void, a formless, silent flame. No lover’s touch ignites this haunting grief; It burns for something far beyond belief. The wind’s lament, a hymn of dying trees, Fills hollow streets with spectral melodies. Its whisper stirs my soul, yet leaves me bare, Yearning for truths dissolved in autumn’s air. Oh heart, how cruel your need to crave and pine For phantoms wrought from seasons’ slow decline! This love, rootless, blind, and atmospheric, Is but the earth’s soft moan—anthropocentric. Phantom Roots Beneath the ashen weight of skies grown bare, A shadow hums where forests breathed their air. The rivers murmur ghostly to the stone, Their voices hollow, echoes of the known. What have we lost, that haunts the marrow’s thread? A spectral green, the soil’s unspoken dead? The meadow’s song now fades, its lyre unstrung, Yet deep within, a primal chord is sung. The oak once bound the earth to stars at night, Its roots a tether, unseen, infinite. Now severed—still the heartbeats faintly ring, The pulse of things forgotten, lingering. The coral’s bones, bleached bright as silent moons, Cry out where tides abandoned ancient tunes. Still, waves persist, as if they seek in vain A vanished shore, a balm for nameless pain. Oh man, oh hollow, grasping hand, forlorn, What thread, what root, what bond was ever torn? This absence hums through all you claim to own, A phantom limb, and you, its broken bone. ![[Dark Poem image.jpg]]