Summer

Deciduous Lives

/ Korin Thomas / Leave a comment

Autumn Leaves

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.

Deadheading

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Deadheading 8.30.17

Late summer latitudes in quiet heat.

Listless breezes brush floundering flowered
stems for deadheading – as fields of lost minds
are plucked and thrown, as useless, away,
once their lovely charms become
relics of distant blurred memories.
Too many to remember but the first ones
growing by a white picket fence, four in all,
flowers in a row, planted long ago –
spring flowers now bending their faces to the ground.

Late summer thoughts of fading flowers –
deadheading browned blooms by evening’s light.

Portland, Oregon – August 22, 2017

We are aging, my three siblings and me. We were born and grew up by a short and low white picket fence. The idea of “deadheading” as applied to persons may be a troubling concept, yet it stands in recognition of our participation in the cycles of life shared with all of being.

Photo is my own, taken August 30, 2017.

Heat

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Early morning is warm in an orange blush
without breath from a cool moonlit breeze.
My exhalation is the only suggestion of air
in a room with open windows, still curtains.
Summer trees – still life water color greens
on a hazy blue field of pastel blurs
in two empty and emotionless dimensions.

The beginning of heat, organized by degrees
as blocks of Fahrenheit – Celsiun colonnades –
mass across the landscape in radiant ripples,
floating mirage waves, one after another
distending to each wilted and pale horizon,
piling up in a haze, distant wildfires ablaze,
its onslaught a precision incursion into desire.

I can long for the sweet breath of spring
the cool falling of autumn into its season
even the sharp piercing of winter’s night
to little avail in this advancing heat –
summer’s gift to my waiting life.
I shall learn from its surrounding presence
to still, breathe, water my life’s pathways.

Portland, Oregon – August 3, 2017

Summer

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WIN_20170713_203148

Days without rain swimming in summer’s warm bath –
crunching pine needles, spring blooms wilting brown
over dusty dry fissures widening under the heat.
Open windows for the cooling sere night sky
with its silky moon and, at dawn, fresh breezes
before the windows close, curtains drawn
dark and cool within. While out?  Gathering heat
and every hard surface a glare – wall, window –
as white wisps of cabbage moths flutter two by two.

Breathe in the warm still breath of summer
as it lingers through the horizons of the day –
fresh morning bird song to a slip of wind
through leaf flutter at twilight exhalation.
Smell summer in its morning dew and milky dust;
taste it’s strawberry sweetness dripping
into the folds of lips, tongue, throat – falling
down and down into the heart, into the body
into the petals of earth’s flowers spun and rare.

Portland, Oregon – July 25, 2017

Photo is my own – Echinacea in our summer garden.

Late Summer

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Dog Days 2

Cool and lush of spring –
memories in shades of green
saturated life, complex form,
growth from a dark womb
beneath our feet, bearing us.

Summer follows in lighted waves,
early morning until the evening star.
Swells of shimmering warmth pour
through the ripening garden.

Late summer withering heat
wilts the barely tended
unwatered places barren brown
in needles and fallen stems
lying quiet in decay.
The harvest comes to be
uprooted, prepared, devoured.

Portland, Oregon – August 27, 2016

Photo is my own, taken this date.

Moon of the Red Blooming Lilies

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Outside my window grows the summer
sweet garden – resplendent, redolent, still
in the morning dew damp chill.
She does not know about the hours, how
a clock tick captures in mechanical tock.

She knows the sun’s arc, pouring
rain, warm sweet laying ground
under silver white moon urge
tide surge and nights sweeping
over flowers unfolding in rose, lavender,
sweet pea, all the tall grasses –
unfettered by segmented time
broken moments of loss or dread.

I?  I know about time, succumb
as if it were my only
spun and twirling destiny.
What few seasons come and go
that we bloom –
flowers of creation’s fertile desires –
Unfolding under the moon
of the red blooming lilies
without time but this.

Portland, Oregon – July 9, 2016

My title, “Moon of the Red Blooming Lilies” comes from my recent reading of Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, a classic telling of the tragic story of the destruction of the native peoples of this land, from the side of those who were destroyed.  The author, Dee Brown, does a masterful job of telling the story.  He often added the names of seasons as the native peoples called them.  In this case, the “moon of the red-blooming lilies” corresponds roughly to July.  It is a book I should have read long ago and recommend highly.

 

The Clouds of Summer

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Ballglove 3

As a boy I dreamed,
without understanding or experience,
riddled with self-doubt and anger,
of what I might become.

I laid on the summer green grass
watching the clear blue sky
darken, becoming first a distant rumble
it seemed, then lightning flashes and hard rain.

Years passed. Some dreams I lost
others, unformed, called me
into difficult and strange worlds,
I did not pursue, disappointed when I did.

I am what I never dreamed
a man living in the clear light of day,
like a boy with flesh alive, senses awakened
infused with clear and distinct memories
from one who has never stopped
wondering who he would become.

I remember bright clouds of summer
billowing across the open sky
above the green grass and blue lake.
I would become, I thought,
another me, find a passageway
to some other person who knew about love
found a way through the deep forest
entered the sacred healing grove.

I laid on summer green grass
baseball and glove by my side
watching deepening cloud forms
pass in endless succession –
spiraling vapors, drifting masses
of white, gray, or dense dark
out of which I thought
I might discern my life’s way.
I saw only the widening open sky
an impenetrable portending veil
through which the future
could not penetrate, could not
reach back through to me
tell me what I wished to know
as I laid there, just a boy.

I had not breathed enough or failed enough;
laughed or died enough.
I look back now through cloud layers
shredded by the passing years.
I can see him still lying on the summer grass
ball and glove by his side.
He is ever watching the summer drifting clouds
squinting, wishing to see who he will become,
trying to find – me.

Seattle, Washington – April 2013

Photo is my own. I found the glove in an antique store several years ago. It is very similar to one I would have worn when I was a boy, playing in the 9-year-old league back in the small Michigan town where I grew up.