The first breath of autumn comes as gray and cool cloud cover breaks before a September sun finds its way into morning. The rest of the day all bright and clear! Yet, the remains of morning - exhaled dry leaves, fallen pine needles - scent the day with memory and sadness. This day for many years has come when, though I knew it was near, I did not know when I would feel a season ending never to return. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Portland, Oregon - September 14, 2021
Autumn
Angels of Things
Angels of things
drift lazily in crisp air
tasting autumn fruits
carrying them to the gods
quietly waiting.
In entwining roots
buried in plushy ground
they are; in rare earth
that could if it would
grow around and devour
spew me up as cedar
as pine – needled and tall.
Shadows of autumn
leave quivering trails
through golden leaves.
Fallen angels drift down
through and around
all that I can see
and more and more.
A thrilly deep tremor
as thrusting wings
push from a molten core -.
bursts as a bubble.
Time trails into ether
ceasing to be anything at all.
Space shakes and drifts away.
There, on the fountain’s rim,
perch the Angels of things
as birds drinking deeply
taking wing as thoughts
as sweet dreams in flight.
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Portland, Oregon – October 20, 2020
Autumn Eve
Autumn eve in smoke and ash.
Autumn leaves making their solemn way.
These are not the days when I was young
piling leaves and setting them afire
watching the drifting smoke and smelling
the sweet smells of summer going away,
walking to school, chattering, laughing.
What do children know these days
of the days we knew?
What do they know of what
we never knew, imagined
or nightmare dreamed
when we were young?
I feel for their fall into autumn –
what more they will know
will suffer and grieve
long after I am gone.
Portland, Oregon – Eve of the autumnal equinox, September 21, 2020
Written during the season of wildfires on the entire west coast of America, blanketing large areas with smoke and ash, destroying homes, killing some. These things are deathly harbingers of a climate change we humans have brought about. No doubt.
Deciduous Lives
When in spring green leaves grow
under the sweet canopy of a swelling sky
so grow our spirits within us, larger and lovelier,
expanding into the radiant fissures of life
bursting their seams revealing a broad firmament
to touch with fingers of life the hand of infinity.
Summer comes, its lush garment wraps about our lives
and we play with an ancient and unmerited inheritance –
gifts of intellect and desire, urgent love and sorrowful loss.
Our branches and leaves broaden, tangle, and cross
knitted through with warm air flowing through senses unfolding –
flower sweet, bird note, blue sky, rough bark, bitter cherry –
the sensuous warp and weft of the seamless garment of life.
It does not last, the canopy of spring, the garment of summer.
It falls down around us in russet patches torn and worn.
We look then to see our bare arms waving leafless
naked against the cold reach of approaching death
yet it is not death after all but sleep and dream
under the blanket of winter, its wind and rain and snow.
Portland, Oregon – December 11, 2018
Photo is my own of our front yard maple.
Sowing and Reaping
It is a time to plant, late autumn,
as the rain and the cold come on.
Roots, tender and young, find their way –
spaces among the stones
crevices in the clay.
Among young spring cedars
I first breathed the fresh air
began to grow into the welcoming earth.
My flower opened, my branches
stretched out to the brightening sky.
Spring will follow winter
revealing what lives, what is dying.
The thin and leafless young plants
may bear life in bright fruits –
birds in their branches,
wind in their leaves.
So may spring find me
replenished in the land
opening my arms to the cool breezes
my heart to the falling rains of spring.
Portland, Oregon – November 14, 2018
October
Glory October days in yellow and bronze
float through the sun’s low slanting lights.
Spring flowers and green summer leaves
melt into twilight, dinnertime, and a glass of wine.
A spare and bare ground is lost in sounds
of geese crying overhead – going, going, gone.
The forecast is rain as autumn leaves again
with the geese on the wing, in the wind
blowing fast towards our unknown
days and nights of wonder and fear.
Let us drink the season full
feel the passage of time as a lost love
come again to guide our way.
Portland, Oregon – October 22, 2018
The Joy of Life
Leaves fall in an autumn breeze –
another and another –
forgetting branch and twig
knowing not where they go.
Joy falls from the sky in autumn leaves
through southern suns slant
broken in branches, needles, bird flight;
fall without ceasing through crackling air.
All day long in light
I pass through fallen leaves.
While I sleep through the night
joy falls through its dark mysteries.
I wake to beauty twirling in flight
clinging a moment more
to creation, then letting go –
another one and another –
flung into the realm of the Graces
elemental virtues of the human soul,
parchment on which to write
a human life.
Portland, Oregon – October 12, 2016
Cancer
Look into darkness, organic form
multiplying within my own body – alive –
portending life diminishment, slowly
as autumn, harbinger of winters night,
passes in slanting shadows
across the landscape of my time.
Write of movement hidden within
from strangers under layers of skin
vital organs, blood vessels – layers thin
as fluttering veils masking passage
of dark and microscopic growth.
Write, poet, words about cancer –
verse inclined towards disease and decay;
give voice to the realm of dying –
cancer’s voice whispering in a breeze
as the far horizon approaches.
Turn not away from this messenger nor
withhold forgiveness for your own body;
do not fear to imagine cellular movement
becoming aware of its presence
sensing in its curves and contours
labyrinthine confusion inside your warm body
coursing as well through wakening thoughts
finding ways into sleep and dreams.
Listen to cancer speaking in echoes
rising from deep and sonorous wells
telling stories from ancient pools
where life began, formed in wombs,
already there, in fertile green places
so like the burgeoning spaces
in which it now resides
on a still autumn afternoon.
Speak, poet, of what is in you
settling down as if in a field of grass
blowing in the breezes of sunset.
Say to the blown grass “here I am.”
Welcome, dark fruit of my being,
stranger from an unknown land.
Sit by my fire, share my bed,
feast on the riches of my life;
stay with me as the leaves fall
and wait with me as winter comes…
then you may go your way
with my blessing – only pray
you not take me with you when you go.
Portland, Oregon – October 3, 2016, eve of the feast of St. Francis.
In answer to your question: Yes, I do. So far, it looks to be treatable and probably curable, so I have hope and for the long term. As I read this, it seems darker than I feel. But, in writing, I feel I have to face this thing. Thus, it is no different than anything I write as a poet. It is about looking at one thing in an attempt to evoke the holy, however you or I may conceive of it.
In Cascadia 