Indian Summer

A glass half-full of August pours its gold on autumn's copper turning it to bronze. The brittle Santa Ana gusts unfold to rattle omens hidden in the fronds that burst from trunks up high like absinthe flame and singe October's turquoise-matted sky. Each puff of smoke that dormant clouds became has disappeared from desert's opal eye as amber winds come shrieking from the east, igniting saffron plumes among the brush like raptor birds of paradise, a beast awakened from a summer's verdant hush. The crows in flight are ashes on the air that scatter in the sunlight's molten glare.