Autumn sigh
A poem
Article voiceover
Autumn sigh
Autumn’s arrival
has nothing to do
with the turning
of a calendar page
My hand turns the latch
signaling a readiness
for your potential presence,
slide the window
and find
a slight resistance
to the slowly
widening openness.
Bare unprepared skin
encounters crisp
outward to inward breeze
a delicate whisper,
no more impassioned longing
but cool breath
releasing a settled knowing
that I am ready.
Bitter, delicious coffee
brewed in the same manner
as yesterday,
except today it is not
for a burst of energy
but simply to prepare
the common filter
with a sacrament,
dark grind immersed
in clear spiraling streams
and a black waterfall
crashing into the pool below,
to savor the message
from the earth
You Are
fire settling into the tongue.
I walk outside
into morning darkness
that reveals my soul
through specks of starlight
succumbing to the glow of dawn,
first glimpsed
in the outer
reach of trees
and head cast high
into swaying branches.
Fertile green summer
fades into dryness
finished with diligent effort
and forward into vibrancy
that reflects on its harvest,
then gives itself
into a final release
of rusted leaves
offered to all
no matter their harvest.
and everything
to do with an
inner sigh
of relief.Thank you for reading! If you are so inclined, leave a comment about what strikes you, speaks to you, or stirs in you while you read. I look forward to whatever dialogue may happen here, and within a week I will be following up with a Reflection post on how this poem emerged into being.
Brian
Listened and then read it. Lovely, Brian. Great to hear your voice.
My favourites and most evocative lines: black waterfall / rusted leaves.
My immediate takeaway from this (and this is coming from my own sense of the transition of seasons, and perhaps I'm being too surface level, perhaps not, but I'm willing to just say what I felt here at first) is the acceptance of change and that shift that can come with it, that slowing down and reflection on what has come to pass. Often, if the summer has been especially hot here, when we reach autumn I feel ok about it, sometimes glad about it because yes it brings relief, even as much as I love the warmth of the sun, and there's almost a positive motivational shift that comes with that too.
I loved the poem. Another wonderful installment. My favorite lines are:
Bitter, delicious coffee
brewed in the same manner
as yesterday,
except today it is not
for a burst of energy
but simply to prepare
the common filter
with a sacrament,
I read your poem as I listened to it. I love the way you chose your line breaks and how the poems looks visually with the short first and final stanzas, with two longer stanzas sandwiched between. it looks like a sigh to me, somehow.