Song for Autumn

Don’t you imagine the leaves dream now
    how comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
    nothingness of the air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don’t you think
    the trees, especially those with
mossy hollows, are beginning to look for

the birds that will come—six, a dozen—to sleep
    inside their bodies? And don’t you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
    the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
    stiffens and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
    its long blue shadows. The wind wags
its many tails. And in the evening
    the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.

--Mary Oliver

The Cloud

I am the daughter of Earth and Water,

And the nursling of the Sky;

I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;

I change, but I cannot die.

For after the rain when with never a stain

The pavilion of Heaven is bare,

And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams

Build up the blue dome of air,

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,

And out of the caverns of rain,

Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,

I arise and unbuild it again.

--Percy Bysshe Shelley (final stanza)

[Photo taken of clouds over the Sequatchie Valley].

Autumn Equinox

 

Growing up in a little Vermont glen,

I used to dread how daytime waned each year,

a process that began gradually

at summer solstice as long afternoons

stretched past dinner, and you would have to strain

to notice a few moments missing

when twilight's pink hue finally arrived.

But then sunshine diminished rapidly

following the autumn equinox

nestled in our village between mountains,

and there was no way not to acknowledge

the increased territory of darkness,

encroaching as if an invader

over more than its share of the clock.

The expansion of shadow's boundaries

once disturbed me. I thought the realm between

dawn and night had permanently faded,

and along with it, carefree play outdoors

absent concern for school the next morning.

Even learning it didn't last, I still

felt dismay at what seemed an endless dusk.

Now in midlife, I welcome these months

which offer dark in place of light. They give

a refuge from the sun's persistent blaze,

that constant reminder of work to do.

The gloaming has a snug quality:

a companion's gentle embrace, someone

by my side ever since I can recall.

--Jason Harlow

[Photo taken in Wallingford, Vermont]

Forty-Five Years Together

 

Forty-five years together.

Good times and bad.

In love and out.

Yet always persevering.

Tenacity and grit

are underrated.

Why not praise them, too?

Together to the end.

It is evening.

This is a love poem.

--David Budbill, from Happy Life

How it is with us, and how it is with them

 

We become religious,

 then we turn from it,

then we are in need and maybe we turn back.

We turn to making money,

then we turn to the moral life,

then we think about money again.

We meet wonderful people, but lose them

   in our busyness.

We're, as the saying goes, all over the place.

Steadfastness, it seems,

is more about dogs than about us.

One of the reasons we love them so much.

--Mary Oliver

[Photo of our daughter and her dog, Maui].

Angels

 

You might see an angel anytime and anywhere.

Of course, you have to open your eyes to a kind of
second level, but it’s not really hard.

The whole business of what’s reality and what isn’t has never been solved and probably never will be.

So I don’t care to be too definite about anything.
I have a lot of edges called Perhaps and almost nothing you can call Certainty.

For myself, but not for other people.

That’s a place you just can’t get into, not entirely anyway, other people’s heads.

I’ll just leave you with this.
I don’t care how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

It’s enough to know that for some people they exist, and that they dance.

--Mary Oliver

[Our sweet and sassy angel, Ella Lynn].

Missing the Boat

 

It is not so much that the boat passed
and you failed to notice it.
It is more like the boat stopping
directly outside your bedroom window,
the captain blowing the signal-horn,
the band playing a rousing march.

The boat shouted, waving bright flags,
its silver hull blinding in the sunlight.

But you had this idea you were going by train.

You kept checking the time-table,
digging for tracks.

And the boat got tired of you,
so tired it pulled up the anchor
and raised the ramp.

The boat bobbed into the distance,
shrinking like a toy—
at which point you probably realized
you had always loved the sea.

Naomi Shihab Nye