Every Autumn

words fail me. Brilliant color mutes me. I have only senses to see, hear, touch the season.

If I could, I would give word to the Shadow Darners, hovering just above water's surface, or to sky and leaf reflected in calm water.

But I can't.

So I look elsewhere for language.

For the Chipmunk in My Yard
by Robert Gibb

I think he knows I’m alive, having come down

The three steps of the back porch

And given me a good once over. All afternoon

He’s been moving back and forth,

Gathering odd bits of walnut shells and twigs,

While all about him the great fields tumble

To the blades of the thresher. He’s lucky

To be where he is, wild with all that happens.

He’s lucky he’s not one of the shadows

Living in the blond heart of the wheat.

This autumn when trees bolt, dark with the fires

Of starlight, he’ll curl among their roots,

Wanting nothing but the slow burn of matter

On which he fastens like a small, brown flame.

Much Too Early

Autumn

by Adam Zagajewski

translated by Renata Gorcyzynski

Autumn is always too early.

The peonies are still blooming, bees   

are still working out ideal states,

and the cold bayonets of autumn   

suddenly glint in the fields and the wind

rages.

What is its origin? Why should it destroy   

dreams, arbors, memories?

The alien enters the hushed woods,   

anger advancing, insinuating plague;   

woodsmoke, the raucous howls

of Tatars.

Autumn rips away leaves, names,   

fruit, it covers the borders and paths,   

extinguishes lamps and tapers; young   

autumn, lips purpled, embraces   

mortal creatures, stealing

their existence.

Sap flows, sacrificed blood,

wine, oil, wild rivers,

yellow rivers swollen with corpses,

the curse flowing on: mud, lava, avalanche,   

gush.

Breathless autumn, racing, blue

knives glinting in her glance.

She scythes names like herbs with her keen   

sickle, merciless in her blaze

and her breath. Anonymous letter, terror,

Red Army.

(My severely sprained left ankle might as well be the Red Army.)

What's Coming

Beginning
by James Wright

The moon drops one or two feathers into the field.
The dark wheat listens.
Be still.
Now.
There they are, the moon's young, trying
Their wings.
Between trees, a slender woman lifts up the lovely shadow
Of her face, and now she steps into the air, now she is gone
Wholly, into the air.
I stand alone by an elder tree, I do not dare breathe
Or move.
I listen.
The wheat leans back toward its own darkness,
And I lean toward mine.

A Painterly Day

Julie wheeled her little red wagon to Lake Cheston, took out her materials, and headed down to the beach, where I found her.
 
"When I took out my palette, a dragonfly landed on it," she told me.

Her youngest child has just started kindergarten, so Julie has time again to do something she loves: paint.  She is by training and temperament an artist, apparent in the beginnings of her landscape.
 
"I'm glad you're doing this for yourself now," I said and walked on.
 
We're kindred spirits: Julie creates her vision on canvas, and I, in digital photos.

Both of us prove that autumn offers gifts for the eyes that see them.

October Is the Month for Painted Leaves

So said Thoreau:

"October is the month for painted leaves.  Their rich glow now flashes round the world."

So says the water.

So say I.