Autumn Lethargy

The week begins and ends with an evanescence as shortly lived as morning mists, plaintive in passing; a nascent newness crescendos from silence. Just as things once soared towards sunlight, now petals seep, fall, and petioles close their little doors, and what was once tall huddles near the womb of earth and warmth. A patient subliminal mythos lingers, I suspect, brooding with the foreign fog that seeps over the ridge.

The haste of summer still simmers, and while the harlequin autumn stumbles its way in, its lethargy struggles to settle. The begrudging retreat of sunlight and conquistador clouds battle, and the brown grass greens once more, while mosses surge to life in gutters and corners. Only winter suffers no whimsy.

I’m too calculated, slow in discovering the progression of life. I want to allow the proofs, quantities, and sums to seep over me, slow as the waters grow cold and the leaves turn gold to die. I never loved the fast life, the hunger for now and instantly – it’s the patience of winter gnawing at the skeletons of trees and the flowers’ too-lipid realization that goodbye arrived without why and how, and the whale’s taciturn turning about south.

The hummingbird and butterfly are too busy for me. It’s the bumbling bear not the bee, I adore, the lumbering moose and not the chittering squirrel. All are welcome by the fireplace with me, sipping tea, cider, chai, and freeing world’s trapped in prisons of paper bound.

Driving into the Valley

Turning on my brights, descending down the Shins road, this light only accentuates an eerie twilight splendor. Another world we've entered here, shadow shapes in charcoal replace what daytime placed before - robust pines are hefty arrowheads, rolling hills are timeless, cresting waves, milky moonlight falls over a maple explosion, captured and frozen in a moment of firework display, and houses pleasant during sunlight droop into witch hovels, strobed in the lightning of my headlights. It is a spectacularly fae land, celtic and mysterious, that bowls this gentle valley of home. Mists burbling over the hilltops and sliding over bald peak are a breath caress against the window of night. I've never, may never, know such love.
Crawling, creeping, clawing, time comes with clandestine fervor, covert against the clamor of daily motion. Stop and breathe, please, or in brief steps, breathe in this living day, love this beautiful clay of people. An extravagance, then, this life. The first great grey in a season-wide eternity of such. Gun-metal skies swallowing this year, and crying tears mourning the lost clothing of trees.

Wherein I write embarrassing poems in my sleep...

... and make up for it by finishing with legitimate poetry.

August is a fickle season, a human season. Summer simmers and winter shivers, and spring's a night owl in the morning. Fall is that troubled teen: graceful, violently shifting, whimsical, moody, a vibrant, fragile life. When the tears of trees trouble the earth in crimson sheets and cotton clouds sheepishly graze the sky, and the birds skedaddle south or wriggle deeper into their nests, the cork of fall from summer severs us, and our lives flare into a temper of pigments. We are a glass beauty, angelic, translucent, brittle as first frost beneath smoky stars. We are fall.


At some point in my life, I developed a habit of waking in the cradle of night for a bathroom break. During these instances, I write down whatever is on my mind, briefly, on my phone. At first, I was reluctant to own a smart phone. Given no choice, I've discovered some very attractive features (taking easy notes in the dark). Most often, my "stroke of genius" at 3 in the morning is not worth contemplating in the morning. Occasionally, I remember dreams, and those I frequently write down as inspiration, and avenues into my subconscious.


If you send a string, I'd follow its lead
where'er my heart it may bring
through a whisper, if a light
into darkness beyond night
seas a storm may rend asunder
yet tarry not the tides
for whose smile I climb
up mountains high
pluck
a flower from the gods
or swim up the styx
for a momentofyourtime
I'll surrender all of mine


About as raw a poem as could possibly be. Even as I transfer it from my phone into this blog, I yearn more than anything to edit and prettify the rawness. I probably will, eventually. But I don't often sleep write poetry. You know how it is when you've committed so much time into a practice, habit, activity that your dreams and thoughts are rife with that activity? Like putting a puzzle together so many hours that, even sleeping, you are clicking pieces together in your dreams. Or reading a book hour after hour or studying for a test, and as you lie in bed, your fingers are twitching as they highlight another line, pen another reminder, or your eyes scan left to right and invent new stories for your subconscious reading pleasure. Maybe I read too much poetry these last couple of days, and now my subconscious tries, desperately, to formulate imagery from the sanctums of sleeping story. If so, I hope it continues.

Eventually, I'll be capable of poetry (or some semblance thereof). Nothing's so poetic as the palette of autumn




Under the Harvest Moon

  by Carl Sandburg
   Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.

   Under the summer roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.


And a little John Donne Holy Sonnet 14 (always a favorite):
Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Squalls and Serenity

I had a post prepared regarding an interesting abortion article I read today. But I'm entranced by the rain, and my words tumble through my fingers in incoherent patterns. It's the clapping of a thousand tiny hands; the swishing of new seas, without names, sloshing across blackened streets; whispers of wind whisk the water into waves, rippling into rising mists. What was I contemplating? The deaths of unborn infants? Les enfants mortalis?

Why such somber notes while these tiny percussions plummet to patter against the slanting roof, drizzle down the gutters, and puddle and pool across the green grass? Waters collecting into droplets, streaking down the windows into pools along the walls, forming runnels in the grass towards rivulets in the roads, gurgling into drains against the curbs and stagnating in rainbow-swirl pools on sidewalks and where the road dips and deepens. Sugar maples slap their branches against the walls, the oaks jettison browning leaves, dogwood whispers with the whimpers of butterfly wings, and the regal pines ruffle,  but stand proud against the prevailing winds. 

An excellent night for philosophical dialogues while sitting under fleece blankets and sipping ciders. One of my roommates and I, we discussed determinism and predestination, miracles and divinity, Christendom and creation, stories and mythologies, culturally infected beliefs and ideologies. I've missed long philosophical dialectics full of witticism and crafted hypothesis. I could linger long into the night on such musings, if life permits. Tonight, life does not permit. Humbly and thoughtfully, I retreat into the darkness of the room, and listen once more to the rain's storming outside these screens. Makes me want to set up tarp and tent, and sleep beneath the soggy heavens, snug against the bristling winds and tearful clouds.

Oh, I wish I lived in a log cabin with a loft and could listen to these sounds until morning. The power flickers. We'll see who succumbs first: the storm or the electricity. Let the tempest of this night commence. 

Fingertips...

You need them.

I was grating ginger for a curry soup with a micro-grater, and removed the tip of my index finger. It swiftly formed a pool of blood (deep enough not to drip right away - actually bad), before I stuck it in my mouth. Fun facts for self-doctoring: saliva contains mostly water (over 98%). The part of saliva that is not water contains some interesting things, including white blood cells and enzymes useful in the clotting of blood. So if you cut yourself, spitting on it or sticking a cut finger in the mouth can aid in the rapid covering of platelets and a sheathe. In addition, saliva is an anti-bacterial, and helps prevent against infection. Pretty fancy. So I spent a while sucking on my finger. I'm slightly anemic, because I don't get as much iron in my diet as I need, but my blood tends to clot better than it should, considering its thin aspect.
It's difficult typing, I assure you. Some strange things I noted: the rest of my fingertips, despite sustaining no injury, all prickle in pain incessantly, as if enduring a sympathy throbbing for the inflicted finger; being bi-dexterous helps a little, though I still require my right hand for certain activities. The blessing is that my left hand catches on quickly to delicate tasks. Also, I use my right hand a lot more than I anticipated, and my passwords for the computer are muscle memory, and since one of my fingers is out of the equation, I have been having trouble remembering my passwords (since I can't use that finger). Bah.

Rivulets down the roadside streaming
Tides the autumn breeze's bringing
Light in cozy abodes flick'ring
Eyes unfocused distant dreaming
Hopes they waver, faiths unfold
A lone, untouched, unbridled cold

When choosing to fight lonely battles, you can only blame yourself for defeat.

Stumbling into Fall

Early-morning frost sits heavily on the grass, and turns barbed wire into a string of stars. On a distant hill, a small square of yellow appears to be a lighted stage. At last the truth dawns on us: Fall is staggering in, right on schedule, with its baggage of chilly nights, macabre holidays, heart-stoppingly beautiful leaves.
~ Diane Ackerman - A Natural History of the Senses

Autumn batters that distant gong
This new season's song
A glorified rhyme and time
The dawn rises in pink butterfly wings
Slippering the hills - the morning sings
Notice now this summer requiem
Questions I ask the clouds
Whose cotton shrouds heaven's lantern
It's now the poets and authors and muse
Pen their lines and lyrics and truths
While gutters sputter and water spouts
Queries I pose at the shapely clouds
A rhino, an angel, a spoon
Do they know?
Where the winter sits in august's time?
How lightning lights and cracks and blinds?
When feather snow from heaven's pen
Stops us in our homes, curling
Like kittens on the mantle, purring
In that radiant glow,
reflected in our eyes and brow
Ember leaves drop - somehow
Coloring and cleaving close to earth
Cleft as the dreams and hopes
Of the loved and loving days of halcyon
Will you - Autumn dear - come near at night?
Under the falling stars of this white-robed sphere
We'll garden walk, our toes alight
On diamond-dewed grounds like fields of starlight
Whilst whistle we write and dance and smile
Through mountains, forests, the tigris, the nile
It's Autumn, telling transparent tall tales
Where copper, crimson, and umber prevails
In the honeyed, pumpkin, cider trails of time.


Cleft is an interesting word, in each of its conjugations. It is a rare word that means nearly its opposite. I cleave to my ideas, I am cleft from hope. It assumes either a separation or a uniting of pieces, a breaking and a binding. But between each element, whether in the cementing or the clipping, a thin slice remains. When a man cleaves to his wife, there is still an individuality, a preventative from an ultimate merging. The progression into the next season is such, a cleaving more than a clear-cut, a sliver between times.
Already the maple leaves assume a yellow-green, light and lovely as daylilies, and dogwoods hint at their crimson future.
So many things fall, this time of year: the leaves, the hours of sunlight, the temperatures, the clouds over the valleys, the rain (oh, the lovely rain!). It is the season of writing, when temperatures outside forbid long mountainous hikes and I begin penning, sketching, defining the flavor of the clouds floating above like mashed potatoes in a menagerie of grey, mythical shapes.

Augury of Autumn

The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. 
~- Lord of the Rings

A curtain of mist descends upon the valley, and the earth radiates redolence in reply. Not far now, not far. Summer's scorching strangle-hold over the sky is overthrown, and silver linings settle in, augury of autumn.  The woods thrive on this; you can hear the whispers, and as the sun sets, somewhere behind that glaucous veil, does the sun settle down to rest? The wind howls beneath the grey wolf sky. There is no moon.
No fanfare sunset with wispy clouds like exploding pastel balloons, no dramatic denouement into dusk - this solstice strikes the world as a shooting star, flickering and brief. I saw one, last night, and wished, for what use superstitions if we cannot smile and dream?



September Sonnet

On this then, Autumn's eve
Aspen greens still leaves deceive
Mulling ciders and chimneys smoking
'neath blankets thick our hearts are warming
From summer's callous, hungry scorching
Borders clearer now, distance greater
Mountain's clouded brow, fog and rainy river
Ocean's wide and growing whisper
Faithless one, can you not believe her?
Or leave her your bleeding heart
Sacrifice - is that not your art?
Like summer sun doth love depart
And parts the seasons into mists
Fall's birthday, dear, blue eyes I've missed


Some things I've never known, cannot know. Patience I work on - need it tarry so long? Trials and tribulations bring joy, right? It is a praying night, a thoughtful night. One of those days where you wake up excited, ready for joyful adventures and friends, and discover they're all significantly busy - is it still the season of love, loveliness, and wildflowers? Silent Saturday, then, and one I've probably procrastinated too long. And church a la mañana. Be peace enough.

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The shape sliding through the underbrush was unseen, though it concealed its passing not. An acrid aroma hovers ominously on the air, the smell of sacrifice or industrial waste? What town was this that assaulted the senses so? Dim lights burned in the valley, silent as stars, and atop the ridge, vertical slits watched, unblinking.