Into the Night
The empty arms of the trees
Reach out to embrace the night.
Over a barren, November world
That shining sky is the only color,
And the pure white flame
Of sacrifice, which is Venus.
The cold makes the celestial colors
Of that ethereal sky purer,
Refining summer’s rich
Outpouring of color.
The time to be quiet, and to listen
To your own heart has come
With the night, and with the Winter.
Things that matter so much in the Light of day
Ambition and the struggle for recognition
Fall away from us now, petals falling from a tulip.
Loving and being loved
Glow like the streetlights we are leaving behind.
We are nothing but two shadows, you and I,
Two leaves blown along the street.
Our hearts are applewood logs
In the fireplace of first love.
In the Apple Orchard
As the sun of September warms my face,
I bite into crisp, tart sweetness:
Windfall apples.
The air shimmers
With the winy scent of apples
Rotting in the grass.
The orange pool of pumpkins by the barn
Wait to be carved into Jack-o-Lanterns.
White draft horses patiently draw a farm wagon
Full of laughing people out in the country for a hayride.
Fallen leaves crunch under my feet
Deep ruts carved by wagon wheels trip me
As I walk away from the circle
Of my friends’ voices and laughter,
Away from the crooked rows of apple trees,
Toward the mossy stone walls that guard harvest fields,
Toward the square-dance of blazing maples.
Flames of crimson and garnet, gold and saffron
Break forth into Glory Hallelujas
Last chorus of praise
Before winter’s long sleep.
October Walk
By the roadside, we fill our hands
With autumn treasure— horse chestnuts
Smooth as surf-tossed pebbles,
Glossy and brown as a scrubbed table
In the afternoon sunlight.
“Look! This one’s about to split open!”
“Watch out for prickly spines.”
“I will. See, this one has a flat side!”
Rock maples, sugar maples, scrub oaks
Are orange as a pumpkin on an autumn doorstep,
Red as tomatoes ripening on the vine,
Gold as heaps of dead pine needles,
Green as squashes in the garden.
Silvery birches are white as swan-boats.
The sky is autumnal blue
As the asters that survived the frost.
“We’ve got that butternut squash in the fridge to finish up.”
“Thought I’d make a pie out of it. Do we have enough eggs?”
“Yup. Tomorrow we’ll be making applesauce all day.”
Piles of dead leaves crunch under my feet.
They are sweet smelling
As the last September rose.
“Another couple days and we’ll have to rake leaves.”
“Hope we can burn them. They smell so good, burning.”
The autumn wind runs its fingers through my hair.
It blows away the ignorance of spring,
The haste of summer,
The urgency of harvest,
And now the brown shadowed hayfields
Know the meaning of peace.
Because it is an October wind, and it knows its job,
It takes the leaves as they flutter to the ground
In luminous death.
Day Break
Come, let us take the wings of the morning.
The wild heart of nature will beat against ours,
And we will walk hand in hand with God
In the cold, windy dawn of Autumn.
The eastern horizon is silken apple green,
The sky is smooth dark blue, like painted glass.
Venus, jewel of the morning,
Is shimmering over the tossing willows to the west.
The moon is fading out with last night’s dreams.
Orion, the stately hunter, treads his stately march,
With his bow and his arrow he shoots the dark away,
Chasing it over the western hills.