something for the season: a sonnet of sorts

Growth

We’ve gathered autumn acorns for the vase

We’ll fill with them—an ornament to place

On the tabletop.

We rest beneath the oak, our chill-stung lungs

Recuperating; down from knuckled rungs,

A brown leaf tumbles.

Corinne begins to pluck the woody caps

From their nutshells. Her cousin Lily slaps

The offending hand;

She says, Those perfect acorns . . . now they’re spoiled.

Corinne begins to cry; her humus-soiled

Fingers streak her face.

The sun grows red. The earth grows cold

Against our jeans. The year grows old.

this is not the poem's title, the title is below

Blood

First to grandmother’s, whose grief is refined,

Weathered, that is to say, on the other side of the family,

To eat late and hear the story of our lives—and how she “just laughed

And laughed and laughed” when so and so

Did such and such,

To occupy her room occupied by a ghost

Charmed within picture frames—silver, dusty.

To Bristol. Bristol to Roanoke.

A forgotten beauty, that is to say, lost in the mines

Of unrefined remembrances,

The quilt of late October laid

To warm the foothills. A drive worth the drive.

Hours, if given back, which would be re-spent identically.

A fast-food meeting with grandfather, whose grief

Is engrained—ravined and veined—in the skin,

Laden in eyelids. Arby’s. Freezing.

Could they turn down the air? Sorry but no.

Life’s refrain is restraint, apology, coda. With feeling.

Our little caravan stops at a church. Out we pile and stretch and moan.

If they got ‘em, uncles and step-aunts are smoking.

Children of cousins duck behind cars. Bashful—a word,

Come to think of it, only uttered on occasions

Like this. Like this:

So many hugs, I lose count. Fewer tears but still many.

Mostly smiles, faint recognitions, empathetic nods.

Songs—favorites of the pain-free man in ashes,

Traces of morphine, maybe, but certainly no trace of need—picked

And strummed as he would have done,

As he once showed me how.

A dinner of sandwiches after.

Hugs of departure. Lumped throats. The usual,

That is to say, the common way for strange

Days like this.

Turning for home, the Peaks of Otter,

Scapulas of blue earth in early evening,

Heave into the sky where the Hunter’s Moon

Exsanguinates all else.

appropriateness

Here is an excerpt from The Gist of Elijah chosen for its seasonal appropriateness. (What an awful, ugly word--appropriateness--I shall never use it again, not even when it is appropriate.) Reminder: The narrator (Justin Latterly) is writing the biography of a poet--one Elijah Stenson; and here, Justin is fresh from a fight with his off-again, off-again girlfriend.

With several hours to kill before my session with Stenson, I drove to Klieger Park. The parking lot was empty except for two cars—a brown station wagon and a blue Civic like mine. I parked under a maple as far away from the other cars as the small gravel lot allowed and sat for fifteen minutes too sapped of will to budge. The speakers crackled Johnny Cash. I brooded and let the music sink me deeper like a bullet weight on a fishing line. The day was clear, sun bright in the rearview, one cloud trolling the sky through my windshield. I should get out and let the early autumn do its trick.

If I was a poet, I’d write of autumn. If I was Elijah Stenson, I’d cast my lines in the reds that begin to bruise beneath the greens of summer. In Virginia, as a child, when poetry was still possible, I cherished the distinct flavor of fall. Each breeze brought the burning of leaves or the barks of front-yard football. You stepped out the door and life welcomed you, still so young, in on the secret of its seriousness. Not much. Not enough to quell the thrill of the pirate you’ll be come Halloween or the Indian come Thanksgiving. But just a tinge of decay, a redolence of the grave. Something that, at the time, smells pumpkin-spiced and feels hackled with cold weather.

I got out of the car. The gravel crunched and gave way beneath my heavy working boots—the ones with steel toes for protection against dropped boxes or the collapse of heavy equipment. In my rush to skip Dodge, those shoes were the readiest at hand but they made for sore hiking. Nevertheless, I tromped across the lot, past the other two cars, and onto to the paved walking track. I headed for the river against the direction of the cartoon duck feet painted on the asphalt. I almost turned to go the long way—the pull of arbitrary obedience absurdly strong—but gathered courage and continued counter-clockwise, blue and yellow duck feet be damned.

The river was strong with recent rain. Fallen limbs and plastic bottles rode the rapids like a rodeo cowboy on a bronco. The water was high against the jutting banks; thick tree roots cut extra eddies into the roil. I wished for a kayak. At the mere thought, my bowels cramped and grew warm. Just shove off and dive in. Parry the rocks and fight the flumes. Then somewhere down the line, smash into the Cahaba River and go and go and go. I had never kayaked in my life. The fact didn’t even faze me. By the time I heard the dog bark, I had nearly reached the Gulf of Mexico.

the aspect of breath

Autumnal Equinox. Is there a better phrase in all of English? Awe-TUM-nul ECK-win-NOKS. How perfectly iambic! How strong yet welcoming! How lovely the promise of decay on cool winds!

In middle-Alabama here, the temperature stays hot for as long as it darn well pleases. And it usually pleases to well into October with intermittent reprises clear through December. This past week, Fahrenheit had a hundred degree fever for three days. Not cool. Not by a long shot.

But heat, for all of its blister and blare, cannot consume the soul of the season and its promise. When words like crisp and clean will slough-off their quotidian adjectivity, their referral to french fries and dinner plates, respectively, and take on the aspect of breath and suggest the revival of lungs. When north becomes North. Not a direction but a destination where forgotten colors greet us in the huddled forests of Tennessee, along the masterpiece county roads of upstate New York--north north and north--Maine, New Brunswick, so far north that coming back south will still be full of color. Vermont--how secret you keep your treasures. Virginia--how generously you welcome November.

And at last, south south and south. Back to middle-Alabama where, behold, she's relented. Which calls for a light jacket and a warm broth. Which every year it does, but each year by surprise and each year so crisp and clean.

Here is a poem, plucked from my yearling thesis, of which I am very fond and proud. Happy equinox, my friend. May winter come slowly.

Jacket Pockets

Autumn is a time to feel things in our jackets we haven’t felt

For at least a year—

The folded five

And the coffee shop receipt,

The peppermint in plastic

And the crumpled reminder to self—

When, from the warmth of pockets, we hear the crackle

Of a dead leaf

And feel its dusty bones.

in lieu of sadness

One of the hardest decisions I make every day is whether or not to be sad. Because there are wars and we're dying in them. Because we all prefer our own way and there are not enough ways for all of us. Because there are things I simply can not do and maybe even more that I will not do. Because sickness is cruel and accidents happen and I always feel a little stupider than I was the day before which is only slightly ameliorated by the fact that everyone else seems to be keeping pace.
Which is sad. But for some reason and by some means, I usually stave off the sadness.

Because there are planetary nebulae and darling hedgehogs. Because eventually it will be autumn so there will be magentas and Brunswick stew, whiffs of beautiful decay and barks of backyard football. Because rain both comes and goes and is welcome in both the coming and the going. Because of food. Because of books.

And books can be sad, horribly, sobsomely sad but they also smell like autumn.

Besides, in lieu of sadness, madness is a viable option. So daily I can always decide to lose my mind. Or at least let it wander for a while.

And besides that-- sad's good too. Like decay. Like winter. Like ignorance.

applique drippy ventricles

Here is a new poem. Something of a departure. How so? Well, for starters, the formlessness of it is unusual for me, as is the non-attention paid to meter. Secondly, there is the blatant (and titular) confessionalism from which I tend to distance myself.

It is important to remember the difference between autobiography and the use of the first person pronoun. I use the latter with often annoying abandon. The former strikes me as icky for the most part and even when I do use it, it is only to create an authentic resonance in the poem--not to applique drippy ventricles to my flannel sleeve.

It is also important to remember not to be pedantic, so let's do this:

For Once, a Confession

I confess. For once, let me start with that.
Secondly, there are the gifts of God
Like the promise of death, like the air on which I
Will never fly. And in conclusion,
Autumn.

But wait, remiss if I fail to mention
The months in bed—the soreness, the tears
Loosed from clinging when the room was dark.
I confess. Because now it might be safe.

I hope for more yellow-finches to bend
The furry stalks of the zinnia, playing hummingbird
As they do, keeping time on slower wings.
I hope in the meantime. Between
One magnetic resonance and the next.
Now and again in the spaces left open
By distracted grief.

Fifthly, because I’m on a roll,
There are the pillories of God—
Those AWOL urinations unstaunchable
In the twist of white linens. Head and hands—
A puppet show, the symbol
Of prayerlessness. Of waiting, dumbfounded,
To inherit the earth.

Of waiting in general.

Here’s one too:
The wail of babies makes me glad
But not for ugly reasons. Not for the fact
Of my jealousy, or for the falsity of my cynicism,
But because I know they will soon
Suckle and burp and gleefully
Kick their doll-baby legs.
It’s the same as with the finches,
As with the night-sessions
Of doused pillowcases, as with
Autumn.

As with autumn in general.