Sub-roar To A Bright Indian Fall
Every year I trump
In the down quiet hallows
In the paved parking ways
And on thru rudy ochre'd forests
And yellowed quid roads
To Gramma's house,
To the great Book Barn
In search of raw kind verdure:
'Leaves of grassy poems,'
'Bone fire for my sanity,'
Hearth-Light for the cognitive dendrites
Of my voluntary mind.
I see their motionless fall-downs,
I hear their squish-masp tearing
Under my black winter shods;
I feel their reaching up
Through my two walking sticks
—as I always do--
Remote-Sensing their seasoned silent plaint
That sub-roars into a too bright Indian Fall
Where their flipped colors sting-chill our air,
--they are here--
They are here with their invominating whispers,
Voices I hear from the higher world of wood
Repeat and clear:
‘Come, come—and walk over all our dead bodies.’
(And every year I bury them --the fifty youthful ones who have known my trumping. Though they have passed I still hear their voices from the higher world.)
Every year I trump
In the down quiet hallows
In the paved parking ways
And on thru rudy ochre'd forests
And yellowed quid roads
To Gramma's house,
To the great Book Barn
In search of raw kind verdure:
'Leaves of grassy poems,'
'Bone fire for my sanity,'
Hearth-Light for the cognitive dendrites
Of my voluntary mind.
I see their motionless fall-downs,
I hear their squish-masp tearing
Under my black winter shods;
I feel their reaching up
Through my two walking sticks
—as I always do--
Remote-Sensing their seasoned silent plaint
That sub-roars into a too bright Indian Fall
Where their flipped colors sting-chill our air,
--they are here--
They are here with their invominating whispers,
Voices I hear from the higher world of wood
Repeat and clear:
‘Come, come—and walk over all our dead bodies.’
(And every year I bury them --the fifty youthful ones who have known my trumping. Though they have passed I still hear their voices from the higher world.)
Every year I trump…
Every Fall, I am there, but here-after people will never hear me. I trump about their still, lameless and—some--blameless bodies. I am so loud in my mind for them, but you outside will never hear the trumping of my heart for the youth I have had to bury for what ever God’s reason. For it sure is not our reason. We who love would never ask them to go.
And the trump is not for us who have survived their times; it is for them. They are still with us, time to time, in each of our pitiful seasons. Each of their passing was a season that must be traveled through, must be gained mastery of as best we, the loves and families, are able. All the heart is there in the season, and we brayed then as we must trump now when it comes up again to that cold-falling of the grievers.
Now in my after-days I am here for them—trumping with life inside the life I still hold open for them. Not really waiting for them to step back into my rooms we had held dear, but this is a telling, this trump I do, a telling that it is I and I alone who try to bring rivers home from the sky, strewning torrently my tough tears upon melancholy boughs. Fall is here, in me. Do you not hear my trump?
Every Fall, I am there, but here-after people will never hear me. I trump about their still, lameless and—some--blameless bodies. I am so loud in my mind for them, but you outside will never hear the trumping of my heart for the youth I have had to bury for what ever God’s reason. For it sure is not our reason. We who love would never ask them to go.
And the trump is not for us who have survived their times; it is for them. They are still with us, time to time, in each of our pitiful seasons. Each of their passing was a season that must be traveled through, must be gained mastery of as best we, the loves and families, are able. All the heart is there in the season, and we brayed then as we must trump now when it comes up again to that cold-falling of the grievers.
Now in my after-days I am here for them—trumping with life inside the life I still hold open for them. Not really waiting for them to step back into my rooms we had held dear, but this is a telling, this trump I do, a telling that it is I and I alone who try to bring rivers home from the sky, strewning torrently my tough tears upon melancholy boughs. Fall is here, in me. Do you not hear my trump?
Down-quiet hallows…..
The lowest times on earth are just after losing a forever child. There is no deeper danker quieter dungeon than that unhealthy hole. Yet, when fall comes, we have to go there, and that is when I tramp daily down among their remembered colors, for penance, remembrance and crisp wisdom.
And on thru rudy ochre'd forests
And yellowed quid roads…
It was the first poem I fell in love with (I had not written a single poem at that time) and maybe rather the only poem I am in love with. It was in my high school English class, and we were listening and reading ‘The Road Not Taken”.
I know, for sure, it was the ‘yellow wood’ and the ‘two roads’ that started this warm thickening flood of word-flow for me. But it was also the have trods, have trods plunket of cadences the author had borrowed from his ancient years.
I never knew the man who wrote it, but I knew he was a man after my own thought, a friend who shoveled out words and feelings with frank fervor from veins as youthful as my own.
Probably too it was because of the nouns in the story, or just that it was a story--I was writing all kinds of shorts stories and books by then.
And it had to be the flavors too that he had put in his poem, with all those natural ‘colors’ –the kind that the ‘mind’s eye’ likes.
It made me think of Bomber’s Gulch and Hangman’s Gulch where I used to hide from sun-burns under the tall tree-shades.
But, summatorially, it is clear to me now, as it was then, that mostly it was because this was some good poetry. Good because it was ‘high birth’ –the definition of the word good; good because it was about a good subject: work, life; and good because it was so craftily wrapped around and entendred with the Mother in Nature whom I had so thoroughly grown to love.
After that day in class, I transformed all ‘good’ poetry into a ‘good’ read.
Only. Now, in my End of Years, I find that—truth-all to truth—this thicket-knowing from my past has bent me close in the undergrowth; and has worn me hard about the same. Still as I walk-about among yellow quid roads, and even as lone leaves Autumn-drift in on my moment-quiets, my writing discipline proves to me that loving these fallen natures has made all the difference.
The lowest times on earth are just after losing a forever child. There is no deeper danker quieter dungeon than that unhealthy hole. Yet, when fall comes, we have to go there, and that is when I tramp daily down among their remembered colors, for penance, remembrance and crisp wisdom.
And on thru rudy ochre'd forests
And yellowed quid roads…
It was the first poem I fell in love with (I had not written a single poem at that time) and maybe rather the only poem I am in love with. It was in my high school English class, and we were listening and reading ‘The Road Not Taken”.
I know, for sure, it was the ‘yellow wood’ and the ‘two roads’ that started this warm thickening flood of word-flow for me. But it was also the have trods, have trods plunket of cadences the author had borrowed from his ancient years.
I never knew the man who wrote it, but I knew he was a man after my own thought, a friend who shoveled out words and feelings with frank fervor from veins as youthful as my own.
Probably too it was because of the nouns in the story, or just that it was a story--I was writing all kinds of shorts stories and books by then.
And it had to be the flavors too that he had put in his poem, with all those natural ‘colors’ –the kind that the ‘mind’s eye’ likes.
It made me think of Bomber’s Gulch and Hangman’s Gulch where I used to hide from sun-burns under the tall tree-shades.
But, summatorially, it is clear to me now, as it was then, that mostly it was because this was some good poetry. Good because it was ‘high birth’ –the definition of the word good; good because it was about a good subject: work, life; and good because it was so craftily wrapped around and entendred with the Mother in Nature whom I had so thoroughly grown to love.
After that day in class, I transformed all ‘good’ poetry into a ‘good’ read.
Only. Now, in my End of Years, I find that—truth-all to truth—this thicket-knowing from my past has bent me close in the undergrowth; and has worn me hard about the same. Still as I walk-about among yellow quid roads, and even as lone leaves Autumn-drift in on my moment-quiets, my writing discipline proves to me that loving these fallen natures has made all the difference.