Lead the dead from darkness into your own wonderful light;
in your mercy show them the radiance of your glory.
Universalis
Autumn is beginning to ease
into the lower light
and kettles of trees
simmering their broths of burnished leaves.
Dusk's grey gauze
is unwrapping the splints of stardust
while we stand, each alone, between our charts of faith
and the vast unknowing;
between dying's reconciling
what is and will not be;
where, we lean, to hear, how loss protests
into the poultices of what remains,
and what remains,
is love.
Your "settling autumn " got me thinking about these middling days ahead. I was still in the exuberance of the bursting colors and all this warm sun of September and October where I've fooled myself into thinking this is a "best" kind of summer. The last two days, though, I've noticed the branches poking out of the trees like wires. I resist the coming November! Perhaps reading your piece will remind me that "what remains" when the leaves fall is not nakedness, or shame, or sadness, but love, however starkly it appears in winter's covering.
ReplyDeleteThe words are so great in this piece: kettles, simmering, broth, poultices. I love how the autumn, the dusk and the trees are the ones acting in this poem. "We" simply stand. "between our charts of faith and the vast unknowing" is a huge concept that you expertly place inside one small phrase. I love the honesty of this poem. The fear and sadness, the ending of life, the grief; and yet you gift the reader with hope! For love is there cloaking those barren branches even though we can not see it. Bravo!
ReplyDelete"..between our charts of faith and the vast unknowing...." Marvelous.
ReplyDelete