Autumn

I love the fall,
the rambling untidiness
of overgrown gardens,
a harvest of pumpkins.

The apples, the pears,
the corn rows tall-growing
waiting for the harvest moon
to call us to gathering.

It's a busy time,
numbered before winter.

Have you ever wondered,
When you’re twenty-two-
What will I do
When I am thirty-one?

Will it be fun?

Will I still think,
And feel?
And will my life
Be just as real?
(This is, of course,
Assuming,
That while the Lord is doing
His pruning
He does not cut my stem
And say – “Amen.”)

You wake one day,
Perhaps in May,
Perhaps a sober
Friday in October;
You check the book-
You’re twenty-five…
And still alive!
And good old twenty-two
Is just another day you knew.

But, when did three and four
 Pass through Time’s door?
 (Those sneaky guys!
And right before your eyes –
 That took SOME nerve:
You hope they get what
 They deserved!)

Wait – just a moment –
  Now you’re in a fix’
The shuffleboard of Time
  Has moved you up
   To twenty-six.

  (Maybe now your head is reeling –
  What a wild, exotic feeling;
Maybe…yes…just maybe –
  You will make it.)

Now, you won’t be caught
        Again
 And you’re watching
  Twenty-seven
     Turtling,
 Oh, so slowly,
  So, minutely
Through the heavens.

  As you flash back
  Through the years,
Now your eyes are filled
   With tears
   Gone away,
For the love that’s gone astray,
 For the meadows, forests and
    The fields of hay –
  You didn’t even see.

Now, it’s too late.

You’re twenty-eight.
  Twenty-eight!

    You still feel fine!
Perhaps you’ll even reach –
   Good God! –
 I’m twenty- nine;
There isn’t even time
    To look ahead
    And wonder,
    Or to plan
On maybe being dead
    Before –

 You now are thirty- one!
Welcome to the world –
    Have fun!

MEMORIA

Memoria, I found a memory of you today
In a dust covered closet
Among other childhood losses.

I traced the gravity of your smile
And counted the endless shorelines
That called our sand filled names
And pulled from us a laughter.

Motionless, I was paper-weighted
by your juvenile stare,
No rhyme escaped these lips
To formulate my undoing.

Every vision of you flashed
And in the heat I swallowed
Your forgotten voice,
A belly-ache of amnesia.

Memoria,
I found a memory of you today
And committed it to a dusty closet
To recollect another day.

Suzanne Waits

Suzanne crouches—
hugging dirty knees.
She scans the distant shore.
Suzanne waits, and yearns,
for the soft-voiced stranger.

Suzanne waits,
longing for his touch.
He who took her hand and followed her
through trash and flowers
one rainbow-filled day.

Suzanne’s eyes
search the murky river.
She sees the Virgin in
the drowned faces of
the unloved children.

Suzanne's hair
shimmers in silver waves
And still, her empty heart
seeks the man who shared tea and oranges
in her tiny river home.

Suzanne is lost
in drug-desperate dreams
of shadowy phantoms
who play guitars and sing sweet words
for her alone.

Suzanne waits
and she aches.
for the man who bestowed the gift
of eternal life
through whispered songs of gentle love.