Autumn

Midweek Poetry: Thursday

Muhly grass in bloom (Fall)

It Feels Like Fall

Like a nearby preferred lover,
October with its distinct aromas,
ambiance of Autumn’s threshold,
sending forth changing vibrations,
moods, and patinas.

Animals know this is today,
deer bucks are seen rutting near does.
They feel cooling air, but with heat
in their blood, driving sex to their bones.

Say, mew-len-BERG-ee-ah kap-il-LAIR-iss,
or better pink, coastal, or gulf Muhly
saving face for fading summer annuals
promising striking purple haze seeds.

As plumes of flower panicles perch
above glossy green-leaf foliage
made permanent, a picture in a cloud
striking the gaze of poetic conceit.

Goodbye summer, Fall is here
to change aura and climate,
to soften and heal me, to remind me
pink is a color for comforting me too.

Look both ways in every season.
Both flora and fauna seek attention.
Mind the gaps so as to miss nothing of Mother’s beauty.

Poetry Report: September Poems

Hello, October; goodbye September for another year. For some of us, the march of time is the welcome process of growing up, while others (like me) are alarmed by rapidly advancing days.

Where I live, this year’s September had more days over 100 degrees Fahrenheit than ever, by a large number. Technically, it’s now Autumn. Climatologically, it’s not even close. And some rain, please! (Welcome to Texas)

Personally, it has been a difficult and challenging month for me with family issues demanding my attention and needing my practical and emotional participation. Some of that drama, fear, and heartache are rolled into my poems. But not as much as I would have expected. I did not like the shit storms at all, but I was grateful for the emotional fodder. For me, this is often less craft and more about the art of breaking things. I do like the feeling of being useful and having a purpose.

Thirty days hath September and I wrote 30 more poems. I wrote more on some days because when Muse speaks, I write, but those extras don’t count for the dailies. The titles of the daily poems were:

  1. Sit on my lap Forever
  2. Disrespectful Dress
  3. See Bugs Try
  4. When It’s Real
  5. Sometimes, It is Something
  6. Sit Up
  7. Monet at Kimbell
  8. Pissing Inappropriately
  9. Boys Only
  10. Watching the World go by (standing by a busy interstate highway)
  11. Pat’s Day
  12. Old Hank
  13. The Genocide of Humanity
  14. Those Tears Count
  15. Delicate
  16. Longer Nights
  17. Bureaucratic Control
  18. Skinny Short People
  19. Best and Worst
  20. Under the Red Veil
  21. Barter
  22. So They Say
  23. Global Baking
  24. No Innocents
  25. Cutthroat
  26. The Young Turks
  27. Good Enough
  28. The Ultimate Ultimatum
  29. Prim’s not Proper
  30. My Coffee

Look both ways, but what matters most is that it is officially Fall,
the third season. A beautifully decorative time of year.
While we should always mind the gaps, we should also enjoy the time.

 

Poetry: The Autumnist (NaPoWriMo) Day Twenty-five

Taking a cue from the John Keats poem, To Autumn, I must write a poem that is specific to a season, uses imagery related to five senses (I used more than five), and includes a rhetorical question, such as where are the songs of spring from the Keats poem.

Wasted days and wasted nights
for the sheer pleasure of guiltless
unproductive quietude of awareness,
as days are for summer, so are
nights fit for winter.
Loving both, I favor the transitions
of dusk and dawn, different but equal.

Each year, I am not the same person
I was. Nor am I the same each season.
I am at least four, maybe more
as I sense the changes each year
with each season, each day
brings new perceptions.

I belong within reality and metaphorically,
spiritually, and practically
somewhere within a transition
from summer to winter. An
autumnist is what I am,
but different of type with the
arrival of my knowing about cold
temperatures before I walk
and see changing leaves, I miss the
now gone migrating birds.
I do not hear them now.

Gradually, it seems, everyone thinks pumpkin
is my choice of taste, and the
traditional spice. Smell that
pumpkin pie or is that your latte?

The brisk autumn air is more
noticeable than in spring. It feels
different, more promising.

Pain seems less in Fall than
in Summer. I dance more at
Octoberfest, my balance is stable
and my sense of thirst has proven
stronger. I know my place
during those months with Halloween
and Thanksgiving.

Even my sense of passing time,
it’s more acute when the dog days
have come and gone. It is Spring
now—who will I be this year?
And next? What then? And
what about you?

© Bill Reynolds, 4/25/2019

Look both ways for seasons gone and those in years yet to come.
Mind the gaps when days visit from other times.