Autumn in the Fields of Language

Without wind the yellow leaves

hang slack. Maple, elm and oak

lift torches to the blue of heaven.

A scarlet burning bush ignites the air.

Evergreens comfort the eye,

relief from all that fire and gold.

When my last warm season's done

and time's come to leave this world

of words, bright fields of language

where I play and sing, let flame

in me some final brilliant work

like autumn leaves in changing lights.

--Jeanne Lohmann

[Photo from Wallingford, Vermont]

I Want to Apologize

i want to apologize to all the women

i have called pretty.

before i’ve called them intelligent or brave.

i am sorry i made it sound as though

something as simple as what you’re born with

is the most you have to be proud of

when your spirit has crushed mountains

from now on i will say things like, you are resilient

or, you are extraordinary.

not because i don’t think you’re pretty.

but because you are so much more than that

-rupi kaur

[Photo of three generations of extraordinary women]

Love Wants to Know How

Autumn comes with its riot of death,
its clarion bells of color,
drives the living green to ground
even as it thins the veil between worlds.
The visible and invisible walk now together
with arms outstretched over fields
where workers hasten to the harvest
none may divide against itself.

So: where are you in this?
How long do you loiter
between the said and unsaid,
the done and undone,
between the half and true rhyme
of a life answering a life?

Geese mark the sky with dark wedges,
call with harsh tongues
to what thrives at the margins
of all we so reluctantly receive.
Go now,
quickly and with great force,
toward what burns in your dreams
at the dying of the year.

Who can say?
Perhaps you reap the whirlwind,
perhaps the harvest—
but is it ever enough to not know
the bonds and bounds of what will one day
forsake you for the grave?

--Anonymous 

[Photo of Kent Pond, Killington, VT]

What the World Needs

Don't ask yourself

what the world needs,

ask yourself what

makes you come alive,

and then go do it.

Because what the

world needs is people

who have come alive.

--Howard Thurman

Rise Strong

Our job is not to deny the story, 

but to defy the ending

—to rise strong, 

recognize our story, 

and rumble with the truth 

until we get to a place 

where we think, Yes. 

This is what happened. 

And I will choose how the story ends.

–- Brené Brown

Some Say You're Lucky

Some say you're lucky
If nothing shatters it.

But then you wouldn't
Understand poems or songs.
You'd never know
Beauty comes from loss.

It's deep inside every person:
A tear tinier
Than a pearl or thorn.

It's one of the places
Where the beloved is born.

--Gregory Orr

A Spiritual Journey

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, 

no matter how long, 

but only by a spiritual journey, 

a journey of one inch, 

very arduous and humbling and joyful, 

by which we arrive at the ground at our feet, 

and learn to be at home.

~ Wendell Berry