Leaves by Elsie N. Brady
How silently they tumble down
And come to rest upon the ground
To lay a carpet, rich and rare,
Beneath the trees without a care,
Content to sleep, their work well done,
Colors gleaming in the sun.
At other times, they wildly fly
Until they nearly reach the sky.
Twisting, turning through the air
Till all the trees stand stark and bare.
Exhausted, drop to earth below
To wait, like children, for the snow.
The Milkweed
by Cecil Cavendish
The milkweed pods are breaking,
And the bits of silken down
Float off upon the autumn breeze
Across the meadows brown.
The Robin is the One by Emily Dickenson
The robin is the one
That interrupts the morn
With hurried, few, express reports
When March is scarcely on.The robin is the one
That overflows the noon
With her cherubic quantity,
An April but begun.The robin is the one
That speechless from her nest
Submits that home and certainty
And sanctity are best.
Welcome, sweet robin. Live in my trees. Sing me your song. Teach me of sanctity. Until winter comes again.
Peonies by Mary Oliver
This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises,
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers
and they open -
pools of lace,
white and pink -
and all day the black ants climb over them,
boring their deep and mysterious holes
into the curls,
craving the sweet sap,
taking it away
to their dark, underground cities -
and all day
under the shifty wind,
as in a dance to the great wedding,
the flowers bend their bright bodies,
and tip their fragrance to the air,
and rise,
their red stems holding
all that dampness and recklessness
gladly and lightly,
and there it is again -
beauty the brave, the exemplary,
blazing open.
Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?
Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
and softly,
and exclaiming of their dearness,
fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,
with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
their eagerness
to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
nothing, forever?
Photo by Mark Worwetz
Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.
~Henry David Thoreau
For the Beginning
October, 1993
It isn't ready for poetry yet,
This new familiarity
Intoxicating as a palette of autumn,
Its fleeting sheens rich
As the nap of velvet
Still, I wait
For the intensity to sober,
For the circle to close completely,
And to believe, without fear
That this journey towards oneness
Is as sincere as orange on pumpkins,
Knowing that poetry will flow
In the wake of its fruition.
~Written in the beginning of our relationship, and posted today in honor of the 15th anniversary of our first date, with much love to you my dear, sweet husband. I knew within a month that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you. Am so grateful that you wanted the same with me.
Photos: Beccah Thomas
A Supermarket in California by Allen Ginsberg
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!
--and you, García Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in a hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?
From Collected Poems 1947-1980 by Allen Ginsberg, published by Harper & Row. Copyright © 1984
Credit: poets.org
When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk: he trots the air; the earth sings when he touches it; the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes.
~William Shakespeare, Henry V
