Category: Autumn Anthems

Fly, babies! Grab this wind and go!
You are the hope of butterflies,
the guarantor of their tomorrows.
Claim your spot on the soft earth,
and dream your milkweed dreams
the winter through. Dream how strong
your stem will be, how fragrant
your dusty-rose flowers. Imagine
the flaming wings of the Monarchs
as they return to you day after day
to feast on the nourishment that
only you can provide. Then rise
from your dreams, my children,
and live them. Fly, babies, fly.
Grab this wind and go.

Walk into the world trusting.
Even when you don’t know how to go,
each step opens to the next,
and the Yes will guide your way–
tugging your sleeve, posting signs,
singing tunes, ringing bells,
placing stepping stones across the rivers.
Are not the rivers themselves all led
to find their way to the sea?

Even now, beneath skies deep with clouds
and a cold wind blowing, even now,
in the days of dwindling light, the Yes
provides reminders.   The trees may be bare
and the fields stripped of vegetation,
but look: here is a shrub still holding
its color, a kiss-bright red to dispel
the gloom.  Go into the night believing,
it says, that you are supported, and loved.

To the oaks, the seasons are the breathing
of the earth, exhaling her life-giving sustenence,
then drawing in the radiance of the sky.
To them, it’s all a grand ballet—
the upward rush of sap,
the emergence of leaves,
the arrival of the singing birds,
the flowering and fullness of it all,
then the inward flow, the returning to the source
with gifts of flaming crimson and gold.
And between the going out and coming in
the deeply balanced pause,
allowing summer to ascend to its heights,
winter to reach the fullness of rest.
The oaks surrender to it all, caught
in the beauty, joyous in the rhythm,
glad for their part in the dance.

It never hurts to have some staples set aside.
That’s what Grandma used to say, tucking jars
of home-canned plums. apples, pickles and soups,
beets, tomatoes, white beans and green
on wooden shelves that lined her cellar wall.
Sometimes I’d stand in its doorway marveling at the colors,
remembering the fragrances that wafted through the house
when grandma canned. I thought of them today
when I saw the ripened cherries and recalled
how they hung encased in ice last winter,
and how the early-returning robins
feasted on them in the March snow.
Mother Nature, it seems. has her pantry, too.
Maybe she knew my grandma.

Hour by hour, the lake’s music softens
and slows. The songbirds have gone,
taking their whistles and chirps
to warmer climes, and with them,
the buzzing insects. Now, little more
than the rustling of leaves remains,
an autumn lullaby floating across
the still waters, whispering
the season’s Gloria in hushed
and reverent tones. I stand
on the banks, barely breathing,
and my heart sings its own amen.

The mornings are bathed in fog now
as if the earth were filling her bowls
with some luminescent porridge
to help the sun ward off the autumn chill.
It softens our wakings, letting us linger
a while in the world of wispy dreams
before the illusions of the day solidify
around us, pulling us once more
into the stories of the plays that are our lives.
The oranges and golds of the remaining maple leaves
gleam in the filtered light, bright reminders
that we may play out our stories with lustiness and joy.

You, magnificent maple, are the essence of delight.
To stand inside your sun-filled arms
is to banish every residue of sadness,
every wish for something other than
this shimmering slice of now.
Your lemony leaves sing the music
that I have so longed to hear.
And I dance to you, my bright one,
my every cell shouting Yes.

After the rain, boughs that just yesterday
still waved golden leaves, stand revealed,
poking their bare branches into low clouds.
Beneath them, as far as the eye can see,
a poem of fallen leaves is newly written
on the grass. Its countless verses
tell the tale of the life and death adventure,
the mystery and wonder of dancing in the sun,
never knowing what a day will hold,
but each having its measure of beauty.
And then the final letting go, the sailing
in the wind to the earth below,
and the breathing of the final song:
Home. Home. Home.

This beauty, this air, these cycling seasons,
this wondrous rock on which we stand,
these waters, each tree, every leaf and blade of grass,
every drop of rain, each creature, large and small,
this glorious sunshine, this wild, tumultuous variety
of texture and color and form, was given to us all.
Not to an elite, however defined. Not conditioned
by anyone’s notion of worthiness. But freely,
in love, for our wonder, for our comfort, for our joy.