TEALarbor stories’ Monday Musings are
quotes, mantras, reveries, poems, & practices offering simple ways to
explore the ecotone of the inner/outer landscape.
It’s happening: the full fell fall,
a coverlet of days that loop around
my shoulders as my feet sink low
in mulch or mud, the quintessential drech
betokening another loss of summer, light and love.
I was taught to sag, to wear
this garment of adieu with circumspection
and address the past – O
fair have fallen!
Dank, dark, dunk: I sop along the path,
a somber trace through leaf-burnt umber,
and address my sorrows, line by line,
a threadbare cloak or quilt or whatnot,
text or textures I have worn before.
But somehow I’d prefer a finer truth:
I’d like this fall, its fatal slippage, decomposing
what I took for granted once too often –
darkened woods, a lost position
on the middle way from here to there.
I’d like to hide among the drips, the withering
of trees, the bird-abandoned blaze of branches
that will soon be bone-fire, blackened limbs,
bereft and crumbling but at peace, my home
amid the grainy sands of snow and gravel,
the unending bliss of nothing more.
Jay Parini
All blog images created & photographed by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: "©2014 JenniferJWilhoit/TEALarbor stories. AllRightsReserved."
