Automne Memoires en Provence
He disappeared in the dead of winter… the brooks all frozen and the airports almost deserted… W.H. Auden float across chilly October mornings in St. Remy, singing your friendship out across the fields where last summer’s Lavender and Sunflower blooms chased the sun from horizon to horizon. Like Gypsy singers they sing their bright sadness into stillness coaxing leaves to desert their holy attachment to another season on the branches of Van Gogh’s delicate Olive trees and Avignon’s white Sycamores, and join the great loneliness of orange moons...
Read MoreFeatured Works: Week of Oct 30 (Fall Garden)
Deep into Autumn here in the Northeastern part of the United States, our contributors cultivate a vision of the season. “Incoming Fall” by Joanna Weston provides a snapshot of a garden in early fall. “For Solitude’s Sake” by John Grey evokes that certain quality of autumn light that produces conflicting emotions. “Biophilia” by Michael Estabrook captures a moment of beauty in a backyard garden. “The Garden of God” by Michael H. Brownstein uses the garden as a metaphor for grief. “Cauldron” by Ayaz Daryl Nielsen reveals to us the calm magic of sunset. “Fall in...
Read MoreFall in Philadelphia
Days burst with time. Leaves aflame with color. We trudged through neat piles toward grownup-hood. We had all that we wanted. Youth untouched by earthquakes and aftershocks, we found shelter from the autumn chill playing touch football with neighbors. Unaware we wanted for nothing. This morning an oil painting beckons— a gazebo strewn with wispy vines and landscape of pink blossoms— draws me to dream, backward and forward. We want all that we...
Read MoreCauldron
The cauldron of sunset Slight rain across the forest A tree’s calm presence, its roots deep under the surface of things, hidden within earthen mold and a mightier silence A tree’s calm presence, a tree’s calm presence A mightier silence of earth.
Read MoreThe Garden of God
The last thing left is this slab of stone dead Cold, numbered and lettered rising From the earth’s brown green grass, Dead flowers in bright bouquets with plastic Stems and petals pink, orange, Torn, faded, wind, rain, saboteurs. Every now and then someone comes And comforts the stone, lays a hand across it, Traces numbers and letters with a finger. Someone cuts away the weeds, finds new Pieces of plastic, cleans up the debris. Here the House of Job. The House of Sisyphus. The Mansion of Worry and Sometimes...
Read MoreBiophilia
Love of Nature 1 In my wife’s garden darkening at dusk bats flit soundlessly above azaleas and forsythias. While in the shadows below in the final moments of twilight paper-thin pink morning glories glow. 2 I don’t know what plants are growing in the shade down beneath the bird feeder but they’re growing so I haven’t the heart to clip them or pluck them out or cover them up with peat moss or mulch. 3 Sitting out on the back deck watching the sky with all its blue tumbling down through the branches and leaves of the trees reaching all the way to the ground. 4 In the middle of the...
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