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.
Posts Tagged ‘leaves’
Note to the Inner Green Leaves
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, leaves, ripening, self-doubt, trees on September 26, 2022| 2 Comments »
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.
Despite the Unleafing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, fall, leaves, meter, poem, poetry, shakespeare, song on October 17, 2019| 4 Comments »
That time of year thou mayst in me behold …. Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 73
And though the leaves may fall and molder,
though the winter nights get colder,
and though, my love, we both grow older,
may the choir in me that sings for you
be ever clear and ever blue—
the stream beneath your red canoe.
And though it seems that time’s a thief
and leaf subsides to crumbled leaf
and though the days are gnawed by grief,
may I sing for you forever sweet
in tunes both tame and indiscreet—
sing bare, unruined, my heart, my beat.
To All the People I’ve Hurt Without Knowing It
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, friendship, giving, leaves, love, poem, poetry on November 5, 2018| 7 Comments »
I watched it happen, the confrontation.
The one who was hurt and the one
with no inkling that harm had been done,
and my heart ached for both of them—
for all of us really—all of us fragile, all of us
witless, all of us longing to love, to be loved
for being ourselves.
Outside the window, the leaves
were brilliantly dying, burning auburn,
vermillion, a heart swelling show
of what it is we’ve come here to do—
to give our all and give some more,
to do it unreservedly.
It’s all a series of repetition, design—
the leaves, the fall, the hurt, the blame,
the confusion, the reconciliation.
It’s all a matter of pattern and letting
go, letting go of whatever we think we know
about how to give.
What I’m trying to say is if I have hurt you,
I’m sorry. I don’t understand my own thorns.
I think I am singing and it comes out crooked.
I think I’m supporting and it comes out cage.
There are so many mistakes in my blood,
all of them believing they’re butterflies.
My friend tells me the leaves in fall
are returning to their true colors—
how the necessary chlorophyll disguises
what’s really inside.
What I’m trying to say is look at the leaves
outside the window, see how vibrant they are?
I am trying to love like that,
every day, the colors more true.
Raking the Leaves with Jack
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, Jack Ridl, kindness, leaves, poem, poetry, trees on October 28, 2018| 2 Comments »
for Jack Ridl and all the rakers
Pulling the rake through the cottonwood leaves,
I think of Jack in Michigan pulling his rake
through beech, birch, oak and ash leaves.
I stop to lean on my rake and I think
of him stopping to lean on his rake
and talk to the gods. I’m not so sure I believe
in gods, but I believe in Jack. I believe in kindness.
I believe in friendship that grows despite distance.
I believe that these rhythms of raking and making piles
bring us closer together—all of us rakers, all of us
who step into the slow cadence of pull and reach,
and pull and reach. There is something unifying
in this annual act of tidying the world. Every day
the news is full of all we can’t set right. But we
can drag the rake through the yard so that we
can see the path again. And we can set the rake
aside and stare at the sky and think of all
the people we love and all the people
we’ll never know who join us in this simple act,
reach and pull, reach and pull, reach and pull,
the sound of metal tines grating, the beat
of our own hearts scraping against our chests.
And When October Goes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, change, leaves, letting go, poem, poetry on October 21, 2013| 1 Comment »
Not only all around us
are the leaves letting go,
but inside us, too, so much
is falling. All those fluttersome
dreams we thought would last
forever. Imagine that. There
was a time we believed
that summer would never end.
We truly believed it. No one
could have convinced us then
of a thing called autumn.
And here it is. For hours
today I could have grieved
the leaves as they released—
gold and more gold and innumerable
shades of brown. But I did not.
Funny how the world goes on
despite all this falling. Funny
how beautiful it is to me now,
the empty branches, the adamant wind, the dank
scent of the world as it changes.
Falling
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, cottonwood, emptiness, leaves, love, poem on September 27, 2012| 3 Comments »
It is good
to ache with love.
Tonight
the empty
cottonwood arms
let the moon
escape.
Earlier
they threw
all their leaves
and made a path
of gold.
I walk it
in the dark.
It is all
so beautiful,
so empty,
cold. I take
the long
way home.