Category: Autumn

Living a Life to Die For

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The sound of quiet. The sky
indigo, steeping
deeper from the top, like tea.
In the absence
of anything else, my own
breathing became obscene.
I heard the beating
of bats’ wings before
the air troubled above
my head, turned to look
and saw them gone.
On the surface of the black
lake, a swan and the moon
stayed perfectly
still. I knew this was
a perfect moment.
Which would only hurt me
to remember and never
live again. My God. How lucky to have lived
a life I would die for.
~Leila Chatti “I Went Out to Hear” from Wildness Before Something Sublime  

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
~Mary Oliver “In Blackwater Woods” from Devotions

(thinking today of God’s gift to the world of Jane Goodall,
whose life was about keeping promises)

When the earth and all that is in it glows indigo
in the angled light of October;
opening my eyes as witness to beauty
takes my breath away.

I can’t imagine letting go this life,
yet the other side of ashes and loss is salvation.

My God.
I am so finite.
I hold this close to my bones
with miles to go before I sleep.

My life depends on realizing
I’m living a life I would die for.

photo by Josh Scholten

Dropping Leaves on Time

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Late in November, on a single night
Not even near to freezing, the ginkgo trees
That stand along the walk drop all their leaves
In one consent, and neither to rain nor to wind
But as though to time alone: the golden and green
Leaves litter the lawn today, that yesterday
Had spread aloft their fluttering fans of light.

What signal from the stars? What senses took it in?
What in those wooden motives so decided
To strike their leaves, to down their leaves,
Rebellion or surrender? and if this
Can happen thus, what race shall be exempt?
What use to learn the lessons taught by time,
If a star at any time may tell us: Now.
~Howard Nemerov “The Consent” from The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov

So many reasons these days to awake in the night,
eyes wide open, searching the dark seas of trouble
for some sign of hope,
for calm and peace in this stormy world.

When asleep again, I float among abundant
golden gingko leaves, each waving like a sail in the breeze,
before they tumble, swirling, to the ground, forming
deeply cushioned and comforting pools of yellow.

Navigating these brutal times, I am meant to be
anchored within some safer harbor – I treasure
the old ginkgo as it reaches over each cherished child
with its golden cloak of love and protection.

The Reason for October

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I have been younger in October
than in all the months of spring
walnut and may leaves the color
of shoulders at the end of summer
a month that has been to the mountain
and become light there
the long grass lies pointing uphill
even in death for a reason
that none of us knows
and the wren laughs in the early shade now
come again shining glance in your good time
naked air late morning
my love is for lightness
of touch foot feather
the day is yet one more yellow leaf
and without turning I kiss the light
by an old well on the last of the month
gathering wild rose hips
in the sun
~W.S. Merwin from “The Love of October” from Migration: New & Selected Poems, 2005

Each leaf is beautifully unique,
one of a kind, each shaped and hued differently —
except those more tattered than others,
bespeaking the harshness of
their short existence when
all life surrounding them
seems at risk of being destroyed.

At the end of their allotted life span
they return to the earth from which they came.
And the Creator-God is pleased.
His creations have served the purpose
for which He created them.
Now, they will enrich the soil,
each leaving its own special contribution
toward the next generation
where differences no longer matter.
The unseen birthing and dying mystery continues….
~Alice La Chapelle, in a comment

The wind gusts through shedding branches
stripping them bare,
carrying the leaves
far away, piling up a diverse gathering
they have never known before –
chestnut, cherry, birch, walnut, apple, katsura,
maple, parrotia, pear, oak, poplar, dogwood –
suddenly all sharing the same fate and grave,
each wearing a color of its own,
soon to blend with the others
as all slowly melt to brown.

There is lightness in the letting go,
for reasons none of us knows.

Follow a Drop’s Path

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For this you may see no need,
You may think my aim
Dead set on something
 
Devoid of conceivable value:
An Anthology of Rain,
A collection of voices
 
Telling someone somewhere
What it means to follow a drop
Traveling to its final place of rest.
 
By opening anywhere, a drop
And its story reappear
As air turns to water, water to air.
~Phyllis Levin – excerpt from “An Anthology of Rain”

A drop fell on the apple tree,
Another on the roof;
A half a dozen kissed the eaves,
And made the gables laugh.

A few went out to help the brook,
That went to help the sea.
Myself conjectured, Were they pearls,
What necklaces could be –
~Emily Dickinson

At first glance, this soppiness is melancholic.

Yet, when studied up close,
rain droplets glisten like jewels.

The onset of rainy season isn’t all sadness~
there is solace in knowing
the landscape and I share
an inner world of change:
though sodden,
these are the promises of renewal
within our tears.

Watchers in the Sun

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We are walking with the month
To a quiet place.
See, only here and there the gentians stand!
Tonight the homing loon
Will fly across the moon,
Over the tired land. 
We were the idlers and the sowers,
The watchers in the sun,
The harvesters who laid away the grain.
Now there’s a sign in every vacant tree,
Now there’s a hint in every stubble field,
Something we must not forget
When the blossoms fly again.
Give me your hand!

There were too many promises in June.
Human-tinted buds of spring
Told only half the truth.
The withering leaf beneath our feet,
That wrinkled apple overhead,
Say more than vital boughs have said
When we went walking
In this growing place. 
There is something in this hour 
More honest than a flower 
Or laughter from a sunny face.
~Scudder Middleton “Song in the Key of Autumn”

I walk through the scant remainder of September
wistful~~
a witness to the harvest of
unfulfilled spring promises.

Watching sunlit days fade to
blustery rain-filled nights.

I knew the growing season wouldn’t last.
I knew the time to lie fallow would come.

Give me your hand.
We’ll walk through this darkening time together,
waiting, watching,
for, once more, the promises of spring.

Winslow Homer – Veteran in a New Field, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

Where Spirit Meets the Bone

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The mail truck goes down the coast
Carrying a single letter.
At the end of a long pier
The bored seagull lifts a leg now and then
And forgets to put it down.

There is a menace in the air
Of tragedies in the making.
Last night you thought you heard television
In the house next door.
You were sure it was some new
Horror they were reporting,
So you went out to find out.
Barefoot, wearing just shorts.
It was only the sea sounding weary
After so many lifetimes
Of pretending to be rushing off somewhere
And never getting anywhere.

This morning, it felt like Sunday.
The heavens did their part
By casting no shadow along the boardwalk
Or the row of vacant cottages,
Among them a small church
With a dozen gray tombstones huddled close
As if they, too, had the shivers.
~Charles Simic “Late September” from The Voice at 3:00 a.m.: Selected Late and New Poems 

Have compassion for everyone you meet,
even if they don’t want it. What seems conceit, 
bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign 
of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen.
You do not know what wars are going on
down there where the spirit meets the bone.
~Miller Williams “Compassion” from The Ways We Touch: Poems. 

Christians are called by God to be living
so sacrificially and beautifully that the people around us, 
who don’t believe what we believe,
will soon be unable to imagine the world without us.
~Pastor Tim Keller

As we walk this life of trouble and suffering,
this Jericho Road together,
we cannot pass by the brother, the sister, the child
who lies dying in the ditch.

We must stop and help.
We cannot turn away from others’ suffering.

By mere circumstances of our place of birth,
it could be you or me there
bleeding, beaten, abandoned
until Someone, journeying along that road,
comes looking for us.

He was sent to take our place,
as Substitution
so we can get up,
cared for, loved,
made whole again,
and walk Home.

Maranatha.

Softer Than Rain

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Teach me to walk
with tender feet,
as the wild ones do.
Let me be the cinder-glow
of the fox in her burrow, wreathed
around the honey-spark fur
of her sleeping kits.

Let me be the shaded pools
of the doe’s eyes
in winter, when the snow falls,
when the stars lean down to listen,
when the world is darker
and softer
than rain.

Let me be the swallow
after flight, when she is
perched upon the branch
where the petals of the lilacs used to be,
and she is just still, and quiet,
her downy head inclined, as though
she is praying
for their return.
~Kimberly Beck “Tender Feet”

As the weather changes,
softening in the mists of autumn,
I walk each step with careful feet,
my tender heart singing songs in the rain.
I pray for peace in this troubled land,
for protection from harm until spring comes again.

May God grant a gentle night’s sleep for all His creatures.

video by Harry Rodenberger

Lyrics for Aragorn’s Sleepsong:
Lay down your head and I’ll sing you a lullaby
Back to the years of loo-li lai-lay
And I’ll sing you to sleep and I’ll sing you tomorrow

Bless you with love for the road that you go
May you sail far to the far fields of fortune
With diamonds and pearls at your head and your feet
And may you need never to banish misfortune

May you find kindness in all that you meet
May there always be angels to watch over you
To guide you each step of the way
To guard you and keep you safe from all harm
Loo-li, loo-li, lai-lay

May you bring love and may you bring happiness
Be loved in return to the end of your days
Now fall off to sleep, I’m not meaning to keep you
I’ll just sit for a while and sing loo-li, lai-lay

May there always be angels to watch over you
To guide you each step of the way
To guard you and keep you safe from all harm
Loo-li, loo-li, lai-lay

Heavens’ Embroidered Cloths

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To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the Palm of your Hand,
and Eternity in an Hour.

When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light 
God Appears & God is Light
To those poor Souls who dwell in Night 
But does a Human Form Display
To those who Dwell in Realms of day
~William Blake from “Auguries of Innocence”

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Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
~William Butler Yeats “Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven”

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If I look closely enough underfoot,
I might find the extraordinary
in the commonplace things of life.

So I keep my eyes alert;
my heart open to infinite possibilities
and try to tread softly.

Sometimes what I see is so beautiful,
it is uncovering heaven come to earth,
when the cosmos is contained
within the commonplace.

The God of Light and Living Water
is no further away
than my back yard.

As Leaf Subsides to Leaf

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Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.
~Robert Frost “Nothing Gold Can Stay”

Stay gold, Ponyboy, stay gold.
~S.E. Hinton from The Outsiders

Man’s innocence was lost
the moment we chose
knowledge over obedience.

The gold in our creation
sinks to grief as
we continue to make the same mistakes
again and again;

each dawn reenacts our beginnings
as leaf subsides to leaf
and each winter our endings.

Our only salvage is rescue
borne of selflessness,
an obedience beyond imagining.

Christ stays gold for us;
we rise illuminated like dawn.

To Yield to Change

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I went out to cut a last batch of zinnias this
morning from the back fencerow and got my shanks
chilled for sure: furrowy dark gray clouds with
separating fringes of blue sky-grass: and the dew

beaded up heavier than the left-overs of the rain:
in the zinnias, in each of two, a bumblebee
stirring in slow motion. Trying to unwind
the webbed drug of cold, buzzing occasionally but

with a dry rattle: bees die with the burnt honey
at their mouths, at least: the fact’s established:
it is not summer now and the simmering buzz is out of
heat: the zucchini blossoms falling show squash

overgreen with stunted growth: the snapdragons have
suckered down into a blossom or so: we passed
into dark last week the even mark of day and night
and what we hoped would stay we yield to change.
~A.R. Ammons  “Equinox” from Complete Poems

I yield now
to the heaviness of transition
from summer to autumn –
the soaking morning fog, with
dew clinging like teardrops,
a chill in the air
means I sweater-wrap my days.

It is time for change, reluctant as I may be;
both day and night now compete equally for my time
and each will win.