Moon Poem

The moon says:

Everything that is not real
is real.

Everything that lives in darkness,
everything that lives in sleep.

The moon says

The sunlit life is only half a life.

Close your eyes and see
The radiance of the moon that shines within.

---

I wrote this over a year ago. (Somebody else wrote "by the light of the moon that shines within" and I borrowed it.)

From Above

autumn poem

small boats fill the river
each white sail tinged pink by sunset

September air is cold

Autumn Photos II

Here's another:

Autumn Photos I

Every year I love to watch this tree change color:



Here is an earlier photo, from when it's just starting to change. Ordinarily the leaves are the normal green color.

Sleeping Next to the Heater

Pretty

a mass of morning glories
darkest purple, with red hearts
covering the tomato bushes

The Geese Came Back

I may have mentioned before that I live near a river, and that there are frequently different kinds of wildfowl on the river.

One bird that we have a lot of is Canada geese. I seem to remember hearing that these geese are non-migratory, that they stick around all year. But that might not be entirely true.

After the last heat wave broke (not the one I wrote about, but the one after that), I heard the geese flying overhead one evening. And I realized then that I had not seen or heard anything of them during the heat of the summer. I don't remember when they left. But probably they had a cooler place to go to (how I envied them!) Since then I have seen them around, and heard them. It is a beautiful sound.

The swans were also out on the river recently. There are three of them. Seems like there should be a fourth.

Weather of the past week

Last weekend it snowed (on October 29). It took me a while to remember that it doesn't usually snow around here before the end of November. The snow all melted the next day.

Most of the leaves were still green, but that snowfall was like an announcement: "Okay! It really is autumn now!" It seemed to me that every day the color of the trees was noticeably different from the day before.

There is something about autumn that just grabs ahold of me. The trees seem to catch on fire. Burning yellow, orange, red, consumed from within. As if they retain their heat, while the warmth goes out of the air. For a few trees, the change of color is more gradual - they seem only to become metallic. But in all cases it is a transformation that almost seems to have something desperate about it, and something proud as well. The sky turns a paler shade of blue.

I walked past a house with a tall evergreen hedge, and some very large evergreen trees. Among them was another tree, whose leaves were dark red. You don't often see leaves turn that color, and in this case it was all the more intense, the darkest of red against the darkest of green.

But aside from that one day of snow, I think the weather has been warmer than it usually is at this time of year.

At this time of year

the sunset lies down
upon the curves of the river

the clouds turn pink
the water
turns golden

the fire
passes away

The Sun Came Out

Some people would say it has been raining here continuously for the past week. That is not strictly accurate. It has been continuously overcast for the past week, and frequently raining.

I saw the sun this morning, I really did. But it's gone now, and looks to stay gone for a few more days. One misses it when it's not around.

What kind of tree is that?

The kind whose leaves change color before any of the others. They are yellow now. The leaves look a little like beech leaves to me, but the bark is not beech-like at all.

None of the other trees have started to change yet.

New Orleans 2005

I went there once
It's a city of ghosts
It's always been a city underwater

Now, the spectacle of gross incompetence
and utter lack of compassion
The haves and the have-nots
one set in the White House
the other underwater

Oya, goddess of the hurricane
sweeping through
Transformation
is what's needed now
Bring that wind here
that water
to wash away
Bring transformation now

Oya dances in the cemetery

Oya dances in the cemetery

Oya dances in the cemetery