A child looking at ruins grows younger but cold and wants to wake to a new name I have been younger in October than in all the months of spring … walnut and may leaves the color of shoulders at the end of summer a month that has been to the mountain and become light there the long grass lies pointing uphill even in death for a reason that none of us knows and the wren laughs in the early shade now come again shining glance in your good time naked air late morning my love is for lightness of touch foot feather the day is yet one more yellow leaf and without turning I kiss the light by an old well on the last of the month gathering wild rose hips in the sun.
When the doctor suggested surgery and a brace for all my youngest years, my parents scrambled to take me to massage therapy, deep tissue work, osteopathy, and soon my crooked spine unspooled a bit, I could breathe again, and move more in a body unclouded by pain. My mom would tell me to sing songs to her the whole forty-five-minute drive to Middle Two Rock Road and forty- five minutes back from physical therapy. She’d say that even my voice sounded unfettered by my spine afterward. So I sang and sang, because I thought she liked it. I never asked her what she gave up to drive me, or how her day was before this chore. Today, at her age, I was driving myself home from yet another spine appointment, singing along to some maudlin but solid song on the radio, and I saw a mom take her raincoat off and give it to her young daughter when a storm took over the afternoon. My god, I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel that I never got wet.
-Ada Limón
I’m pretty sure the photo was taken by Farm Girl Kim; used with permission ❤
Leaving my home, traveling alone among strangers; being with my dear family and so soon saying good-bye and leaving their welcoming home; returning to my homey spaces; leaving home again (as I am doing today) and becoming absent from my house and garden… A lot of this kind of drama has been mine, this month. I will write more soon about this week’s travels. I have to say, though, that none of my leavetaking has felt as painful as a scorpion!
LEAVETAKING
On the morning they left we said goodbye filled with sadness for the absence to come.
Inside the palanquins on the camels’ backs I saw their faces beautiful as moons behind veils of golden cloth.
Beneath the veils tears crept like scorpions over the fragrant roses of their cheeks.
These scorpions do not harm the cheek they mark. They save their sting for the heart of the sorrowful lover.
-Ibn Jakh (1000 – 1050) Spain Translated by Emilio Garcia Gomez & Cola Franzen
Tivadar Kosztka, Csontvary Fortress With Arabs Riding Camels
A few years ago I shared a link to this poem so that you could read it in its entirety on the Plough website. Today I’m posting the whole of it here. The poet takes us on a short journey through childhood memories, nostalgia, loss and grief, but doesn’t stop there. She shows how we can honor the memory of those we mourn by living out their virtues in our own lives.
With every autumn that we face, the winter of our life is following closer than ever. Darkness stalks, but I believe each of us has at least one match with which we can light our own “bright fires of love and work,” (and for some of us, even wit) and that these can continue broadcasting waves of encouragement indefinitely.
AFTER HELPING MY FATHER RAKE THE LEAVES
First, I took a running leap, and then, half buried in the heap that we’d raked up, I lingered, caught in a cocoon of leaves and thought. I still remember how they smelled, those castoffs autumn winds had felled— both old and fresh, both wild and clean, the sweet decay of summer’s green; and how they looked—small flags half-furled, hot colors from a chilling world. I breathed more deeply for a few enchanted seconds. More leaves flew as Dad watched, leaning on his rake. He must have known what seasons take. Leaves bright as fire broadcast their dark reminder: beauty was a spark that couldn’t last, the freshened breath of autumn air foreshadowed death. But even so, my father grinned and turned his face into the wind. Years later, I’d learn just how brave my father was, and how a wave of chill or doubt could leave him caught in his own grim cocoon of thought. A darkness stalked him, but he lit bright fires of love and work and wit, and faced the wind, and found his way for decades past that autumn day. And now I kindle every flash of memory that warms the ash of loss. I see his profile still, and face my autumns with his will.
Gladsome Lights 