Tag: Autumn

Delivered New Each Morning

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Honestly, it was the morning sky.

November sun, rare this year,
knocking at the edges of the earth,
sending up flares —
pink, yellow,
that soft peach tone
peculiar to pre-winter,

and my dawn-clear eyes
drew to the window
and beyond
and then I wasn’t really there
in the kitchen, not quite,

like some long bony hand
reached in and through glass,
pulled me through
and I slipped from carpet to deck
without shattering,

or maybe I did stumble to the door
and unlock, and step down,
and feel the leaf-lined decking
against my calloused soles.

No matter how,
I got there,
was there,
right there
with a grace that is
the invitation to stop.

And stare.

And occupy a moment,
allow my edges
to soften
and begin to expand
and take up space
so there is only moment,
not me
or sunrise
or window
or cold,

and that was my detangling,
my daily decision
to keep tender hold
to this life
as if it were orphan
and I, some great full breast,
was made to receive this
tiny bawling thing

delivered new
each break of morning,

and shape it with my hands,
and be all things nourishing,
and love it well, as it was made,
before releasing it
to its own
destined wind.
~Melinda Coppola “It was the morning sky”

Each morning I wake before sunrise,
urged forth from my warm bed
as if called to soothe a hungry crying child.

Instead, it is I who is empty,
humbled to insignificance
to witness sky spilling abundant colors.

In response, I pour out everything I have,
to feed and fill each new emerging dawn,
through wondering words of grateful praise.


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An Unvanquished November Sun

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Than these November skies
Is no sky lovelier. The clouds are deep;
Into their grey the subtle spies
Of colour creep,
Changing that high austerity to delight,
Till ev’n the leaden interfolds are bright.
And, where the cloud breaks, faint far azure peers
Ere a thin flushing cloud again
Shuts up that loveliness, or shares.
The huge great clouds move slowly, gently, as
Reluctant the quick sun should shine in vain,
Holding in bright caprice their rain.
And when of colours none,
Not rose, nor amber, nor the scarce late green,
Is truly seen, —
In all the myriad grey,
In silver height and dusky deep, remain
The loveliest,
Faint purple flushes of the unvanquished sun.
~John Freeman “November Skies”

November is a barren landscape growing peasant-bare and farmer-plain with austerity. Even so, the month is often offset by a royal light show in the skies. I am able to witness golden and purple hues in the light show of the rising and setting sun.

The sky has subtlety and nuance, not unlike what we see in a beloved aging face. Indeed, a remembered beauty is visible behind myriad gray. The horizon’s folds, lines and wrinkles are glowing with lambent light and depth.

Despite these darkening days, our sun is never vanquished. May I be illuminated like these incredible skies, my grayness enrobed within royal golds and purples.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJHK5nG6XbA
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Slip Into Something Light

barnstormingblog5 Comments

Maybe night is about to come
calling, but right now
the sun is still high in the sky.
It’s half-past October, the woods
are on fire, blue skies stretch
all the way to heaven. Of course,
we know that winter is coming, its thin
winding sheets and its hard narrow bed.
But right now, the season’s fermented
to fullness, so slip into something
light, like your skeleton; while these old
bones are still working, my darling,
let’s dance.
~Barbara Crooker, “Reel” from The Book of Kells

I’ve never been much of a dancer other than the square dancing we were taught in grade school. I could do-si-do with the best of them.

Our church used to hold an annual square dance in November along with a harvest dinner. We gathered in a school gymnasium, where my husband and I learned to Virginia Reel up and back and be sore the next day. Those were the days…

Instead, our trees dance and reel this time of year, creating a scandal by getting more naked with each passing day and breeze. They sway and bow and join limbs. Their bare bones grasp one another in preparation for their cold and narrow winter bed, wrapped in the shroud that will give way, yet again to the green leaves of spring, only a few months away.

Pick a partner and away you go!

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Through Empty Branches, Sky Remains

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You are not surprised at the force of the storm—
you have seen it growing.
The trees flee. 

Now you must go out into your heart
as onto a vast plain. Now
the immense loneliness begins.

The days go numb, the wind
sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.

Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.
Be earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under that sky.
Be modest now, like a thing
ripened until it is real,
so that he who began it all
can feel you when he reaches for you.
~Rainer Maria Rilke from “Onto a Vast Plain”

I feel autumn rain
Trying to explain something
I do not want to know.
~Richard Wright “Haiku”

I know what this heavy autumn rainfall is trying to tell me –

Be buffed smooth by the winds, and lose your sharp edges
Be restored after too many hot weeks of drought and dust
Be humbled walking through mud and slosh and slick soppiness
Be grateful for this newly opened landscape as trees shed leaves
Be aware that sadness has its place this time of year, seeking solace
Be balm to ones who are lonely and hunger for encouragement
Be ready to remain still, listen, and content with what comes each day.

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Sweet Pea Run Wild

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Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle,
cracked ice crunching in pails,
the night that numbs the leaf,
the duel of two nightingales,
the sweet pea that has run wild,
Creation’s tears in shoulder blades.
~Boris Pasternak

Here are sweet-peas, on tip-toe for a flight:
With wings of gentle flush o’er delicate white,
And taper fingers catching at all things,
To bind them all about with tiny rings.
~John Keats from “I stood tip-toe on a little hill”

What did thought do?
“Stuck a feather in the ground and thought
it would grow a hen”

Rod by rod we pegged the drill for sweetpea
with light brittle sticks,
twiggy and unlikely in fresh mould
and stalk by stalk we snipped
the coming blooms.

And when pain had haircracked her old vestal stare
I reached for straws and thought
seeing the sky through a mat of creepers,
like water in the webs of a green net,
opened a clearing where her heart sang
without caution or embarrassment, once or twice.
~Seamus Heaney “Sweet Pea” from Station Island

Sweet peas flowering next to orange pumpkins?

Usually separated by season,
one from late spring,
the other from mid-autumn,
they were never meant to meet.

Yet here are strange neighbors,
grown side by side in the same soil
through the same weeks,
their curling vines entwined.

Forgotten sweet pea seeds swelled and thrived,
dropped in the midst of summer weeds,
now rich pastel blooms gracing a harvest table
with spring-like perfume.

So I want to germinate where I happen to land,
even when ill-timed and out of place.
May I run wild while interwoven,
bound to those who look and act nothing like me.

Thus encouraged to climb high,
I blossom boldly
to help face down the fate
of a killing frost.

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Flawless Grace

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The woods is shining this morning.
Red, gold and green, the leaves
lie on the ground, or fall,
or hang full of light in the air still.
Perfect in its rise and in its fall, it takes
the place it has been coming to forever.
It has not hastened here, or lagged.
See how surely it has sought itself,
its roots passing lordly through the earth.
See how without confusion it is
all that it is, and how flawless
its grace is. Running or walking, the way
is the same. Be still. Be still.
“He moves your bones, and the way is clear.”
~Wendell Berry “Grace”

If I’m confused (as I often am)
about where I’ve been,
where I am, where I’m going,
I look to the cycles of the seasons to be reminded
all things (and I) come round

what is barren will warm to the sun and bud,
what buds will open up in blossom,
what blossoms will grow lush and fruit,
what flourishes will feed, fade and fall,
come to rest and be still.

All things come round,
making the way clear.
Grace forges a path
my bones must follow.

To shine in His stillness.
How flawless His grace.

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Another and Another

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l (a

le
af
fa
ll

s)
one
l
iness…

~e.e. cummings “(A Leaf Falls with Loneliness)”

The trees are undressing, and fling in many places—
On the gray road, the roof, the window-sill—
Their radiant robes and ribbons and yellow laces;
A leaf each second so is flung at will,
Here, there, another and another, still and still.

A spider’s web has caught one while downcoming,
That stays there dangling when the rest pass on;
Like a suspended criminal hangs he, mumming
In golden garb, while one yet green, high yon,
Trembles, as fearing such a fate for himself anon.
~Thomas Hardy from “Last Week in October”

Some feel such loneliness,
as if being the only one to fall
until landing gently cushioned
among so many others, still and still.

A few end up suspended, here and there,
twisting and turning in a chill wind,
helplessly awaiting what is to come.

So I dangle in suspense,
held by sheer faith to a slender thread,
hoping for rescue while others pass me by ~~
another and another, still and still
until that apprehensive moment
when I too am let go,
though no longer lonely.

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Breathing on the Window

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Dark mornings staying dark
longer, another autumn

come, and the body one
day poorer yet,

from restless sleep I wake
early now to note

how the pale disk of moon
caves to its own defeat,

cold as yesterday’s fish
left over in the pan,

or miserly as a sliver
of dried soap in a dish.

Oh for a sparkling froth
of cloud, a little heat

from the sun! I shiver
at the window where I plant

one perfect moon-round breath,
as I liked to do as a girl

against the filthy glass
of the yellow school bus

laboring up the hill,
not thinking what I meant

but passionate, as if
I were kissing my own life.
~Mary Jo Salter “Moon-Breath” from The Surveyors

At times, I’m amazed at the heat of my own breath.
Forming a cloudy mist on a cold day,
a round fog on the mirror or window,
a warming of ungloved fingers.

This breath that I was given at my beginning
is a gift I rarely think about,
a gift I take for granted.

Nightly, as the moon honors the sun,
reflecting its glory like a faint echo,
I treasure the heat and heart
of that first gift of breath so long ago.

Soli deo Gloria.

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The Dew Looks Up

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Now in the blessed days of more and less
when the news about time is that each day
there is less of it I know none of that
as I walk out through the early garden
only the day and I are here with no
before or after and the dew looks up
without a number or a present age
~W.S. Merwin “Dew Light” from The Moon Before Morning

A walk around our farm in October is
more or less, before or after, now and then,
a timelessness of shifting seasons and fading days.

A prayer becomes like dew from above,
me looking up to the God
who was, is and ever will be,
who already knows what I am about to say.
He knows I don’t tend to say anything new.

He blesses me with the light of His dew.

I write every day to explain myself to people I will never meet. Perhaps, every day, I am trying to explain myself to God.

God is,
(if I stop to look and listen),
yesterday, today, tomorrow –
more or less, before or after, now and then,
but most especially
forever and ever.

Amen.

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How Generous the Ground

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Once again, the field rehearses how to die.
Some of the grass turns golden first. Some
simply fades into brown. Just this morning,
I, too, lay in corpse pose, practicing
how to let myself be totally held by the earth
without striving, how to meet the day
without rushing off to do the next necessary
or beautiful thing. Soon, the grass will bend
or break, molder or disintegrate. Every year,
the same lesson in how to join the darkness,
how to be unmade, how quietly
we might lean into the uncertainty,
how generous the ground.
~Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer “Shavasana”

The prairie grasses are collapsing,
withering to the ground,
all spent after a season of flourishing.
The next wind and rain storm will finish the job.
Stems and leaves become rich compost
in the seasons that follow,
a generous bed for future seeds.

We expect this fading away.

I know it doesn’t mean the end –
there is still vitality lying dormant,
hidden away, waiting for the right moment
to re-emerge, resurrect and live again.

I know this too about myself.
The dying-time-of-year doesn’t get easier.
It seems more real-time and vivid.
Colors fade, leaves wrinkle and dry,
fruit falls unconsumed and softened. 

Our beauty, so evident only a short time ago,
is meant to thrive inward, germinating,
ready to rise again when called forth.

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