The bends are tight and frequent down the pass.
I can only glimpse the autumn colours
in the vertiginous valleys below.
There are reds and golds, you tell me, even
lime yellows – still deep and rich though mist falls.

Before the narrow track to the quarry
there is a lay-by. A father parked there
and murdered his children to spite his wife…
From somewhere out of sight multi-coloured
birthday balloons rise into the still air.

Though the way is well marked, the lessening
of the gradient relieves. Before the last
ice age this was ocean and may be so
again – but the murder of children
is irredeemable.