A Misrepresentation

Fall is noisy and crunchy scattered like butter brickle across the pan of earth.

Fall is the song of crickets belying a firm daring soon to be buried in snow.

Fall is that older friendship that takes you to the attic for a fuzzy plaid throw.

Fall is the angle of sun catching another oblique to show forgotten shape.

Fall is shivers of thought and the respite in reflection before a scalloped landscape.

Fall is careless and fickle shoving its changes such that you can barely foresee.

Fall is a quick reminder that the year is near behind and you are in act three.

Just Last Spring

Photo taken last April 2014.

Almost everyone waits eagerly for spring unless you are too young for that sudden pastel warmth of a spring morning with birdsong to have made an impression on your memory.  Eventually spring imprints on us all,  and we cannot drink enough of it into our soul to satiate our emptiness drained by tolerating a long, gray and white winter.

Spring taps us on the shoulder and immediately gets our attention, gets our full-eyed study.  We stop in our tracks dropping that project, that book, that conversation and inhale the fragrant air of earth and blossom. We remember all those firsts; first walk, first bike ride, first poem, first kiss, first love, and even first bee sting!  It has a power that nothing else seems to possess reminding us to live in the moment.   We can pretend that we are young and beautiful and still have lots of memories to make for just a short while.  We can put purpose on the shelf and pick up pleasure.

We see things as if almost for the first time.  Is it that crystal crisp light that bathes every nook and corner?  We are not just remembering but actually being in that moment.  Our skin is sensitive to the breeze, our eyes are sensitive to the lime colors of baby leaves, our nose recognizes the rich brown smell of earth after the rain, and even our ears hear a different bird song, one that is more joyful and full of hope and amorous adventures.  It as if we have yet to begin to experience our own life.  We are excited.

We elders push to the back of our minds the question of how many springs are yet ahead for us as we plant something, paint something, photograph something, kiss something and start living all over again.

The Season of Truth

Aging is an ever-schooling process with regular tests.
Extreme aging is the important test on all that was learned.
The luck is in being able to show up for that test.

I search those independent stars for answers
Then down against the ink-black shadows of the woods to the twinkling fireflies,
stars themselves, dancing with a glow that is fickle.
I mournfully accept that another summer
is already mid-way gone.

But even now with brown freckled hands
covered in onion-skinned parchment
I still have no answers to the most important questions.

Why this tiny point in the Cosmos?
Why me?
Where do I fit in this paradigm?
Was there a Master plan?
Can I ask more questions?

As the velvet morning creeps in,
I listen for an answer and hear only the song of the frog.
I hear only a dry leaf dancing with the breeze.
I hear the staccato machine-gun chirp of the cardinal
Waiting for his morning coffee.

I can ask all the questions that I want.
 
I bargain for more time.
Maybe this autumn will bring my answers.
I hug each season greedily to my heart
as if it were my last.