Running Toward Autumn

Lost Lagoon, the 23rd of September, 2023

Here is my response to Kaitlin Curtice’s question on Day 6 of a week of poetry: What does it mean to run toward Autumn, ready to learn from the coming season?

 

Run toward Autumn

with heart and senses wide open —
eager for its lessons and gifts.

Now, as you enter the park,

slow your pace, still your mind —
prepare to arrive to yourself.

Follow the path to the lagoon,

step by step,

by sight, by sound, by touch, by smell, by taste.

Gather red maple leaves

snagged by the thorny branches of wild roses — 

hand in hand, walk with Mother Nature.

Cast your gaze across the water

to the far shore of fading greens
where the trees are beginning to turn.

Marvel at the Great Blue Heron,

with his sharp, unblinking eye,

the skilled fisher of three-spined stickleback.

Turn your face to the grey sky,

feel the gentle rain wash away summer's drought and dust —
Breathe in fresh, clean, sweet, cool air.

Slowly, deeply, completely exhale and soften —
release yourself to the natural rhythms

of the breath, of the place, of the season.

You know and love this urban forest,

all that lives and dwells here

in every season, but especially Autumn.

This feels like home.

You feel whole —
and deeply grateful.

 

Juvenile Great Blue Heron at Lost Lagoon, the 23rd of September, 2023

 

To waken again

Galanthus nivalis (common snowdrop) under the trees

 

Snowdrops by Louise Glück

Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know
what despair is; then
winter should have meaning for you.

I did not expect to survive,
earth suppressing me. I didn't expect
to waken again, to feel
in damp earth my body
able to respond again, remembering
after so long how to open again
in the cold light
of earliest spring--

afraid, yes, but among you again
crying yes risk joy

in the raw wind of the new world. 

Source: Hello Poetry

 
 
 

October

 
 
 

October

By Robert Frost

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow's wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes' sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost —
For the grapes' sake along the wall.

The Fog Town School of Thought

 

The Fog Town School of Thought

by MAURICE MANNING

They should have taught us birds and trees
in school, they should have taught us beauty
and weaving bees and had a class
on listening and standing alone—
the children should have studied light
reflected from a spider web,
we should have learned the branches of streams
spread out like fingers or the veins
of a leaf—we should have learned the sky
is the tallest steeple, we should have known
a hill is a voice inside the sky—
O, we should have had our school
on top and stayed until the night
for the fog to bloom in the hollows and rise
like cotton spinning off a wheel—
we should have learned a dream—a child’s
and even still a man’s—is made
from fog and love, my word, you’d think
with the book in front of us we should
have learned how Fog Town got its name.

Source: Orion Magazine

 

Perhaps

 

Spring is like a perhaps hand

by e.e. cummings

III

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

Source: poetry.org

Ten years ago today

On December 28th, 2003, I traveled to and from Vancouver Island to bring into my home and heart an 8-week old, 3-1/2 pound Westie puppy. And every day during these past ten years, he has given me so much  joy, love and terrier-attitude.

Piper on a Little Mountain trail, December 26th, 2013.

 

How It Begins

by MARY OLIVER

A puppy is a puppy is a puppy.
He's probably in a basket with a bunch of other puppies.
Then he's a little older and he's nothing but a bundle of longing.
He doesn't even understand it.

Then someone picks him up and says,
   "I want this one."

 

Source: Dog Songs

Warming his paws on Christmas Day, 2013

Happiness

Sunbeams on the North Creek Trail, Stanley Park , November 3, 2013

Sunbeams on the North Creek Trail, Stanley Park , November 3, 2013

 

Happiness

by JANE KENYON

There’s just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.
And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.
No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.
It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
                     It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.