An October Poem

October

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
To-morrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
To-morrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow,
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know;
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away;
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost–
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

           –   Robert Frost

September Poems

Spring scarce had greener fields to show than these
Of mid September; through the still warm noon
The rivulets ripple forth a gladder tune
Than ever in the summer; from the trees
Dusk-green, and murmuring inward melodies,
No leaf drops yet; only our evenings swoon
In pallid skies more suddenly, and the moon
Finds motionless white mists out on the leas.
          – Edward Dowden, “In September“

I can hear
September’s
leaf
following
me
down
the asphalt
surface
of Locust Street
cartwheeling
on pins
when suddenly,
it stops –
just
to see
if I’ll turn
to look.
          - [ unattributed ]

(I am trying to identify the author of the second poem but have not yet; please comment if you know the author and I will update the post accordingly.)

Rain, Rain

Early autumn is a wet time of year here. Rain-heavy clouds spin out of the North, West, South, and loosen their burdens before passing on. Sometimes the sky closes and the sun disappears for weeks on end. It can be a gloomy, grim time for those still hoping to cling to a bit more summer.

But I love it. Granted, the prolonged rain can be problematic and tiresome, and I do miss the sunshine, but it is so beautiful. Colors are deep and vibrant, washed clean by the rain and unbleached by the sun. It’s cool enough for a flannel shirt in the morning, a small fire in the evening, cups of hot tea and cocoa and steaming bowls at every meal. A light but incessant breeze soughs in the trees, and I am home. These sounds, smells, colors, conditions echo in my heart and settle with the well-worn comfort of old jeans. I am home.

Rain drips from the eaves, pecks on the roof like a flock of birds. Shallow puddles bleed out from the grass, fill the tracks of the driveway, huddle in small pockets on the sidewalks. Trees and bushes swing with the breeze, dance with a gray sky. It is both bleak and beautiful. And I love it.

Photo courtesy of Harshad Sharma.

Shooting the Evening

As promised, if later than I had planned, due to technical problems, a whole new post.

I’ve always enjoyed spending quiet time just soaking in a good evening. Watching a brilliant sunset, picking out the first stars, listening to the sounds of frogs, crickets, cicadas calling. My perch usually takes the shape of porch swing but I once spent a fantastic evening at a picnic table in the Midwest that rivals the best of them.

We drove miles down a dirt road to a small patch of rolling farm country and pasture land in the middle of Kansas. It had been hot that day, over 100`F, and we had covered many, many miles on a trip headed West in a car with no air conditioning. We stopped not long before sunset, seeking refuge in the shade of a group of small trees near a picnic table. A light breeze drew across the hillside and shallow valley below and I thought perhaps we had stumbled on a small piece of Heaven.

We moved the picnic table into the shade and ate a bite while birds stalked tiny prey in the grass and flew in looping patterns over the grassy field a few hundred feet away. Backlit by the sinking sun, they snapped insects out of the air and sang their successes. The tall grass below them and the bugs they sought burned golden in the sunset light, gilded brightly against a dark line of trees bounding the far side of the field. The breeze was cool, the air dry, and we sat in perfect comfort watching the show.

Just up the road, an old windmill creaked and bumped through its slow and deliberate revolutions. Cattle grazed in the surrounding pasture. From time to time they bawled and lowed and wandered to the tank below the windmill for a drink of water, water delivered from somewhere underground to a quiet Kansas pasture by workings that had weathered there for more years than I and my traveling companion had been alive. Its steady sound was as natural as a creek gurgling over cobbles. I found it unspeakably comforting.

As evening drew the shades and the birds and bugs found their homes for the night, we sat reversed on the seats, our backs propped against the tabletop, and trained our eyes farther upward. Constellations materialized in the clear evening sky. Bugs called in a low chorus from the grass and trees. The windmill creaked reassuringly. And we stayed up until after midnight talking about the world, our lives, and counting shooting stars.

We left early the next morning, dawn still caught in the dewey grasses. We had miles to turn. But I left a piece of my heart on that hillside, and I took a piece of Kansas with me when we went.

It’s the reason I love to travel. It’s a cornerstone of the hope I hold for myself and this world. It’s something pure and simple and beautiful, and I saw it. I didn’t just look at it with open eyes, I saw it. And every time I see a place, a person, an object, I am forever changed … usually for the better.

Surprise Lilies

As long as I have lived here, surprise lilies have bloomed every summer in two patches, presumably planted by some former owner (as I and my black thumb have planted nothing surviving more than a couple seasons). One patch out in front of the house ringed a small decorative tree which died long ago, leaving them isolated in the middle of an open, grassy yard; the other patch, out back, circled two still-lively oaks. But most years they hardly bloomed, and lately had managed only half a dozen blossoms altogether. I thought their soft pink faces were slowly dying out.

But this summer has been wetter and cooler than most, and when they began to bloom it was clear that this year the surprise lilies were going to live up to their name.

I’ve counted 66 buds and blossoms so far. Out front, the lilies have sprung up in their circle like an overgrown fairy ring. And the oaks out back are wearing a frilly pink skirt above their spreading roots. It’s beautiful, and totally unexpected.

What a lovely late-July surprise.

God’s Thumbnail

That’s what some call a crescent moon, the thumbnail of God. Kind of goes along with the idea that “He’s got the whole world in his hands.” Whatever your beliefs, it is a beautiful sight.

Last night I stayed up late, until 3 AM today actually. Time flies when you’re having fun, as they say. I hadn’t intended to, had made no plans to do so, but I got in a groove and rode it as far as I dared, which happened to be three hours into the next day. See, I love to write. You’d never know it, coming to this blog – my organizational skills sometimes leave much to be desired and I’ve been unexpectedly busy since last October – but I write in some form nearly every day.

Last night I got on a roll and didn’t want to stop. See, it’s been a long time since I felt like I really connected with the old muse and had more to jot down than just a line or two. It’s been years. It’s tantamount to a chocoholic being limited to one Hershey’s kiss every day for two and a half years, then suddenly one night finding a great stash with case upon case of kisses and all other manner of chocolatey goodness. When I found my word stash, I wasn’t about to close the door and walk away after just one treat.

Which is how we return to God’s thumbnail. About 2:00 AM or so, I noticed an orange glow in the trees to the East and dismissed it as a neighbor’s polelight. I kept writing. In the vicinity of 2:30 AM I realized it was a low crescent moon, tinted by the atmosphere and just beginning to rise. I watched it for a while, still half-obscured by treetops, and then went back to my words.

Beauty is such a simple thing. At 3:00 AM I left one thing of beauty for another, walking outside and standing in the yard under a hot, silent sky to stare at a sliver of dusty planetary satellite in its slowly fading orbit. And I was awed.

I can see why some call it the thumbnail of God.

Armchair Swimmers

I have returned from my trip, which took longer than I expected and was much harder to re-settle from than I’d anticipated.

My first full day back, I didn’t even bother to unpack. I grabbed a couple folding chairs, a good friend, and headed for the creek. The weatherman had called for clouds all day but they were gone by ten o’clock so we waded into the creek in full sunshine and set up our chairs where the water ran wide and shallow. I jostled a position upstream of a large rock I planned to use as a footrest for my feet and my friend dug a hole for his. We lounged, surrounded by gurgling brightness, and talked for hours about anything we could think of.

Sports, religion, politics, the economy, the future… I love good conversations with good friends. They keep me sane.

We finally retired in the afternoon, grabbed a bite of picnic lunch sitting under great pine trees, and discovered we were sunburned. Apparently neither of us were as tanned as we would have liked to believe. We spent the rest of the day in the shade, edging along gravel bars to follow the shadows. At times neither of us would talk for an hour or more.

Sometimes silence is perfect conversation, too. And it is wholly necessary for my well-being, the more the better.

There is no silence, of course. The air was full of sound from the creek and birdsong and wind in the trees and insects busily buzzing at their errands. But I consider that music, and also an essential.

As the day drew its shades we headed home, a good day gone all too quickly. But more lie ahead. That is the important thing.

Boykin Creek

I recently had the opportunity to visit the East Texas Piney Woods region and found a lovely little spot on Boykin Creek. It was a short visit, unfortunately, but so very pleasant while it lasted.

Boykin Creek was dammed back in the 1930′s by the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps, one of the many Depression-era work programs created by then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt). The result was a small lake with dark water and a fascinating secret: here there be springs. According to locals, several small springs feed into the lake bottom and others dot the parkland, preserved as part of the National Forest complex. Three can be found within easy walking distance of the main parking area and the largest is quite an attraction.

Filling the immediate area with a sulphurous hint, the spring bubbles out of sandstone rocks and tumbles into a small stream, doubling its output just before it runs into Boykin Creek a few hundred yards below the dam. And there, at their convergence, I found a lovely little slice of life.

Two long, white sandbars lined the clear water’s edge, under pines and oaks and magnolias that towered overhead and rocked back and forth in the insistent breeze. At stream level it was nearly quiet, just a light puff of air now and then invading the streambed, cupped between rocky, sandy banks some eight feet tall. The banks and meandering path of streambed cornered the sandbars in an almost invisible location, one I stumbled on merely by chance. And immediately fell in love with.

At the first opportunity I retreated to these sandbars, shed my footwear in the warm afternoon sunshine, and rolled my pantlegs in preparation of exploration. I waded back and forth across the cold creek, reveling in the soft sand under my feet, between my toes. It’s been years since I was barefoot on the sand. Oh how I missed it.

After wading to my heart’s content (it took a while), I padded across a wide sandbar and sat on the downed trunk of a large pine. The air was fragrant and light, the sand warm and dappled with sunshine, and I was unspeakably happy to just sit there and stare at the treetops nodding high above.

No computers or televisions coerced me into an electronic stupor, no radios blared music at earth-shaking volumes, there was just water and earth and trees, sun and clouds and wind. And me.

The perfect afternoon inevitably ended – and much, much too soon – but not before I had reclaimed some part of me I had unknowingly misplaced these last several months.

It was exactly what I needed, when I needed it. Thank you Boykin Creek.