Ode To the Autumn Mist

I.

Oh soft Autumn Mist! Pourer through Summer's dry feast,

Embalming taker of the trees' last spasms

Which, conquer'ng, thou soothe to bedeviled rest

Leaves laved in Earth's sacrificial spectrums:

Of orange and gold and amber-hued red,

Lured to fall by thy vapory anthem

Till, drop by drop, is Summer thus led,

His throne blurred under thy hazel-curved gait

Yearly ripened for him, who helpless sheds

For thee the Sun, the hills, the o're parched weight

Of singed domain. Oh! With softest groans

Is he by thy moistness quenched, yet too late—

Thy feet banish greens to Hades' abode

With withr'ing grace on Persephone's shroud!

II.

Thou dimming bliss! Beyond fidelity's clutch

Do thy dewey hands cull each leaf to feign

It’s stemmed bond from willow, oak and birch

To trade settled life for a dance inflamed!

As if jewel shards flecking the gray seas' churns

Were thought to hover, to forever bane

The colorless tides, alas! They'd sink and learn

Well the seafloor's rhythm, gravity's intent.

Or as sonnets and plays are splashed with words 

In faint rapture of relished events,

So do thy fogged prey gaze from wrinkled nests

And in crinkling sighs throw up lament

Of dances once made in August vest

But no more! Oh grounder, oh darkn'ing Mist!

III.

Hush death, hither life! Soft dealer of time, 

The year's tense labor makes final bravo

From rushed seeds, and incessant pulse of vine,

See the forest's realm 'neath thy haze brought low

Pregnant with these, bearing autumn's crowned mirth:

Apple, wheat, pumpkin, all, emit mellow glow.

If only like these could I ripen new verse,

Make burst on fields of yet unsickled minds! 

Just once mist as thou mist, and cascade the earth,

Layer generations reposed from the grind

Of these dust-founded days. My pen drops mute!

Instead let me thy phantom wanderings find—

There's something mournful in the sweetest fruit,

Birthed only on the dying root.

Undercover

It's the only story you really want to write -
an anonymous source
between the dented cans and
ground level dust:

Headline: we’re all just renting the planet
in blacktop lease agreements.  our
genetic signatures drying
in the bony limbs of children.

the rest are squatters--
estranged business casuals dragging
their tv dramas and hair entropy

to places permanent as
a status update.

Migraines in the Middle Ages

I keep thinking how the monks would find me writhing
in the scribes’ corner, aura shimmering neurons
like a bad trip on Damascus Road, ink bled out on calfskin when
they haul me out
to a death rattle of rosewood beads at the hip as

they whisper to me in-between pirouettes of the cross that
I had the audacity to fail Satan’s test, to let mortal flesh
roll snake eyes on my soul, and finally there’s no more pain
as infallible steel whistles down its just absolution...

...if they only knew that now we find salvation
from devils in white coats
handing out little tablets
swallowed down
like forbidden apples.

Blind Faith

 

Its been five years since surgeons
Lifted the eyes from
Hazel the Pomeranian.

They say Glaucoma can't win a game
If there's no board to play on.

So her sockets took balm in
Crop circles of brown hair
That grew in her valleys like
Slow questions for ghosts.

Five years but
Groans still hint at pleasure
When a quick tail shivers
Puddles in song.

And when the wind finds her
Sitting petite Buddha on a hill

Hazel

always
b l i n k s.

Winter Fade

Car exhaust beats
wisps of cauliflower
hard on the salt.  staying

in the lines, of course.  don’t want
to break the order of
manicured asphalt.

The snow dunes sit high--
beaconing themselves--
on the brown grass.

absorbing that brown tinge
of a season’s edge.