Just when I believed
autumn would last forever
it didn’t.
Not that I really thought
the gold leaves would stay.
Not that I really believed
the warm days were endless—
but part of me wanted them to be.
And so this cold morning,
driving on ice
when I feel the slip of the wheels
as they lose traction,
the heart resonates
with the skid.
Oh, this lesson
in losing control.
Oh, this remembering
how quickly it all slides by—
the light, the warmth,
the deepening gold,
even this fleeting understanding
of how quickly
it all slides by.
Posts Tagged ‘autumn’
After the First Snow Storm
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, belief, control, snow, understanding on October 24, 2022| 5 Comments »
Spring in Fall
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, change, friendship, openness, walking on October 23, 2022| 4 Comments »
for Suzan
It feels right to walk
through naked trees
with our naked hearts
and our naked hands
and thrill in the sound
of wind in dry grass
and delight in how quickly
the clouds are shredded.
You could say, it’s just a day,
but perhaps a day such as this
spent practicing awe and openness
is what changes everything.
You step out of yourself.
Suddenly, anything could happen.
That Beautiful Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, beauty, boat, grief, memory, mother, origami, river, son on October 12, 2022| 7 Comments »
Memory of sitting by the river,
you taking my picture,
the leaves around us
already changing—
you were happy that day,
camera in hand,
no hint of sorrow,
no augury of grief.
Oh, that beautiful day.
I fold it in half,
run my finger down the crease,
unfold it, rotate it ninety degrees
and fold it in half again.
In six more steps,
I’ve folded it neatly into a boat.
Someday, perhaps,
I will float it down the river.
Today, I tuck it
into my mind’s back pocket.
When I need to, I touch it,
run my fingers along the folds.
It carries me along
the current.
After Attending the Conversation on Awe
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, awe, friendship, nature on September 30, 2022| 5 Comments »
for Jay
We stepped into cool autumnal air
ripe with the red scent of tiny crab apples
and charged with the darkling promise of storm.
We were well-armed with studies and stories
on why we might want to choose awe—
but awe chose us the way gold chooses aspen,
the way love chooses friends,
the way shorter days choose fall,
the way beauty chooses what will die.
And aspen leaves whirled all around us
and caught in our hair, and we knew ourselves
as small essential beings in a wide, astonishing world.
*Hey, friends, just saying that the Original Thinkers Festival program on the Power of Awe was AMAZING!!! If you have never checked out Original Thinkers in Telluride, well, it is great for people who are curious and like to engage in conversations about paradox, science, emotion, the natural world and community.
Note to the Inner Green Leaves
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, leaves, ripening, self-doubt, trees on September 26, 2022| 2 Comments »
Every day, more gold.
Every day, a sacred spilling
across the mountains, the valleys.
I have felt, before, like an aspen still green
when the surrounding trees
have transformed into radiance.
Oh, this learning to trust our own timing.
In the meantime, every day more gold.
Every day, a sacred spilling.
The Autumn Morning
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, hawk, play, wings on September 23, 2022| 6 Comments »
Perhaps a red-tailed hawk
calls to you through closed windows,
and curious, you leave your work
and step out into the morning.
The air smells of rain and autumn leaves,
and the hawk makes wide circles above the yard
as if showing you how it’s done—
this is how you play with the day.
Everything glitters as the sun emerges.
Everything, even your thoughts.
Even your greatest loss.
The hawk disappears up canyon.
You breathe as if you’ve just remembered how.
When you go back in, you’re careful to fold in your wings.
Out of Season
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, grief, loss, spring on November 3, 2021| 6 Comments »
Autumn is, perhaps, befitting
for heartache—everywhere you look,
loss. Loss of leaves, loss of color,
loss of warmth, loss of light.
If you are grieving,
the barren world seems to mirror
what’s happening inside you.
Everything seems to say,
See, you can’t hold on.
So how to explain this explosion
of beauty, this unexpected spring of grace—
how to explain the way generosity
pushes through what’s dead
like apple trees in first pink,
how gratitude flourishes, enormous
invisible blooms, and though
you can’t see them, everywhere,
everywhere in this heart of autumn,
you smell the insistent green of springtide,
the astonishing perfume of love.
Another Lesson from the Willows
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, quietude, rest, willows on November 8, 2020| 5 Comments »
The willows beside the river
are practicing how to let go—
they lose the bright red hue
of their skin and their leaves
turn brittle and brown.
It would be easy to think
they were dead if all I did
was pass them by. But
bend one willow, and it’s clear
how alive they still are,
flexible and sincere.
How little rest I allow myself.
I insist on my own evergreen.
How much could I learn
from November’s willows
that take a break from living?
I listen, as if the willows
might offer a teaching.
I listen until it dawns in me,
that the quiet
is the teaching.
Making Applesauce
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged apple, autumn, hope, preservation on October 25, 2020| Leave a Comment »
To buy three boxes of apples
is to believe the world
will go on long enough
that we should preserve
the goodness of autumn.
Perhaps it is practical
to cook the fruit,
to store it in jars,
but I prefer to think of it
as hope filling the house
with its sweet red perfume,
hope filling the shelves
with the memory
of sunshine, of bloom.
Mulching Leaves with Gerard
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, gerard manley hopkins, leaves, poetry on October 19, 2020| 1 Comment »
… by and by, nor spare a sigh, though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie, and yet you will weep, and know why
—Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Spring and Fall, To a Young Child”
The whole time I ran the lawnmower
through brown cottonwood leaves,
I recited Gerard Manley Hopkins
and waded in intricate cross tied rhymes
that defied the straight green paths
I was making. I hope Gerard doesn’t think it rude
I call him by his first name when I talk to him,
as I often do when walking alone.
He never speaks back, but I’d like to think
I’m better at listening for him.
As today when I repeated again his words
about worlds of wanwood leafmeal,
I swear he rose up
in the dry-honey scent of leaf dust
as if to say, this, this, this.
And while I pushed the red Toro
across the leaf-spangled lawn,
I thrilled to know the world as poem,
to know the ambush of tears as tiny wet poems
to know myself as a tired and ecstatic poem
while all around me the leaves continued to fall.