Atumanal Poem #4 - November Night Rain

Cool evening walks in the autumn rains bring a washing away of the year before. All growth is ceased but only to begin again after slumber and contemplation of the winter.  The smells of a rain in the fall are different than those in the spring or summer. Not unpleasant, but more earthy and basic.

Another bad poem for Autumn.

November Night Rain

Promising puddles, only teasing snow

Dark night autumnal rain,
An artist
Creating a collage show.

Of wet leaves, layers of sycamore leaf

Across concrete walks and roads
And grass
Silent sighs, a final dying grief.

Street lights are a sun streak
From a different world
Where dark
Is light and warmth bleak.

Hidden earth smells arise, surround me

In still air that moves like
Miasmic
Phantoms of lost moments, I can no longer see.

Shedding the old and embracing true

The new wonders that
Still slumber
Awakened only when I see you.

Autumnal Poem #3 - The Coming Sleep

Autumn is a time of introspection and of transition. All that has happened before is drawn close and allowed to rest to be renewed with Spring. Ideas, feelings and activity are germinated and brought forth again, perhaps changed but always welcomed anew.

I repeat myself often when I say it is my favorite of seasons. It is never a dark night of the soul, but the long night of dreams and true appreciation for what is and the building of what will be.

After a long walk with a blind dog, I watched children running through leaves, carefully raked by fathers and mothers as they laughed at the spreading colors and groaned when called in well before dinner was ready.  The trees seemed to talk as the wind blew the soon-to-be naked branches. There is a smell to the season that is quite pleasing. It smells like change.

It made me smile and be grateful for the autumns that have been and the seasons to come.

The Coming Sleep
Trees chatter to another
Among laughter beneath limbs
Baring their hidden reach.

Children, tall in their long shadows,

Run to spray orange, red and gray
Leaves gathered to reveal dying grass yellow.

Faces glistening in cloudless sky

Playing in coats, too warm for the sun
Too cold to shed.

Night comes before the last bird call

As the world remembers the coming
Of deep cold and deep sleep.

And in the growing silence

There is the faith and trust
That this is but a fleeting time.

Warm embraces from without

And within are but a season away
When long shadows give way to Spring.

Autumnal Poem #2 - Magma Borne Woman

A poem for my friend, Lauren.

She is a woman of letters. She is a woman of science. She is a woman of the wild places.  All of these things and all at once.

I promised her an Autumnal poem, and here it is.  As always, poorly composed, written in earnest.

Magma Borne Woman

She sees the rock and hears magma and ancient seas

She sees the rock and feels the challenge to scale its heights

She sees the mountain and watches plates collide, fold and move

She sees the mountain and hears the pine-scented wind

She sees the tree and calls it by name

She sees the tree and embraces under its shade

She sees the dying flower and knows when it will return

She sees the dying flower and breathes in the lingering scent

She sees the wild places and their place in the cycle of all things

She sees the wild places and feels their rhythm and beauty

She sees all this and at times

Weeps with joy
Smiles with gratitude
And holds fast the mysteries
Of the things
She cannot see.

2018 Autumnal Poem 1

Percolating for a while, the first of a handful of bad Autumnal poems for 2018. Some are written for a specific person or event, others written as a result of speculative reverie, wishes, dreams or pure fiction. Inspiration arrives at odd times and from odd places.



I have a cold. It is Thanksgiving and this poem came to me after what was no doubt a megadose of tryptophan and cranberry sauce.  Like all of my poems, it's not very good, but written in heartfelt earnest.

A few more to go before the poetry muse takes a rest for a few months.

Happy Thanksgiving!


2018 Autumnal Poem 1

The wind and your laughter, moving leaves and hearts in the quiet afternoon.

Sunsets and smiles, soul piercing an exquisite pain when seen alone and the moon

Rises while viewed miles apart, 

my hands grasp to impart

a claim as my own but shared not between we, 

but belonging to all who can see.

Autumn, with its promise to change, transform and harken the new,

As Winter's promise to come and go in months but a few

And the hopes of dreams and wishes made comes to pass

And the wind blows new leaves and 

hands held in a shared sunset, moonrise 

and lips kiss forever at last.