Awe

The leaves along the creek have turned a bright lemon yellow and the breeze shakes them from the trees like falling snow. I sometimes forget how much I love the fall. Perhaps because I grew up in a largely coniferous forest the thrill of autumn colours was not ingrained in me like my love of the sweetly warm and fragrant summers of the west coast, and the rare and precious snowfalls that sparkled for a few days, sometimes just hours. Sacred seasons of warm green and diamond white, with flowers and a little orange dabbed here and there on the rainy shoulders of the year, subtler to me somehow. Not until Denmark did I experience the thrill of a deciduous forest lighting up in colours so bright against the dark blue of a fall sky, your breath catches. I was not accustomed to such glory. To be shocked by such beauty left me slightly dazed, and does even now when I think of it. But I still never expect fall splendour and so when it comes I am dazzled beyond words and I go around with my mouth open and cliches upon my lips and my camera poised to try to capture a golden, burning, rusty riot of colour upon the arms of the gentlest living beings, until they softly shed their glorious cloaks and stand naked for months as frost covers their refuse thick up in the ground. Oh the beauty of trees! And the sigh of the wind through their branches. But fall is also the creek winding through the soft carpeted forest floor, and the sun still warm where it shines, and the cool shadow, and the song of the birds, and the brilliance of the stars as the nights grow colder. I love it. What words could ever capture such majesty and such mystery as this living breathing earth. As a living breathing part of this planet I am obsessed with it, and sometimes wish we could live forever, together with our loved ones upon this wild and breathtaking earth. We have our season like the leaves, like the trees. We must live, and love, with just as much colour.

I – Reunion

Real July breathes deeply
Dark green forests exhale
Tall majestic conifers
of the Northwest Coast
Growing exquisitely
Right down to the shore
Seagulls above
Big, grey white and brazen
Rich dark blue and soft wave soundwaves
Ocean stretches infinite
Calm as a lake cradled
between hot summer mountains
Colour and gleam
like the pearly lining of an empty mussel shell
like these blue fragments mixed
through the pebbles of the beach

It’s easy to love a sandy beach
The rocky shore requires a different kind of seeing
Sometimes you’re born with it
Sometimes it hits you one misty day
Clouds like dark poems shifting in the sky
sometimes it’s just Home
The white barnacles keep you company
Each wave sighs a little song
before it slips back into the silver crested sea
Frosted with sunshine
The mountains across the strait painted
Delicate watercolour
They frame the horizon with hazy blue lines
Jagged smooth rising falling

Full round clouds
Float just above the peaks
Besides them
The sky is clear
so clear sight sinks like a pebble
into the deepening hue
And gets lost
Lost in sweet blue space
until the honeyed summer sunshine
pulls us back out
by the corners of our eyes

A soft breeze
The salty smell of the sea
Wise and wild geese in Vs
who know where to go
Every stone sits perfectly
Home in time
For this perfect moment
Brought to me by the scent of hot seaweed
and the flash of glass green
just before the breaking waves bow forward
into frothy white
Dry cedars and firs behind me
And drops of sunshine
On my toes

II – Distracted

Hoary grey rock strong beside me
Mother Earth whispers on the breeze
at last I stop to listen
She sees how weary I am feeling
hugs me ever so gently
brushing my temples with her soft summer breath
Let go my dearest
She invites me to slip out of my heavy thoughts
into the light freedom of her perfect day
Her nurturing sunshine
late afternoon softness
Bright green leaves full of life
Feather touch of the zephyr upon my brow
Nectar gleam to the light

I want to
I think I don’t know how
My chest feels tight and heavy
Who am I anyway
Can I dare trust that
I belong
She stays with me anyway
Makes the leaves sashay and twirl
I am tired but I am not a lost cause
I know I can find my way home

III – Reverence

On the beach and the evening Sun
Mm
Exquisite rolling wave
Crash
Because of the wind
But here just here
It blows lightly
So blessed
I am
Kissed by the rich low rays
Here
Well
An ease within
this place
That holds me

The crashing seashell song
surprises me
Tucked away in the trees
I could not tell
Reed grass ripples
Fly away leaves
Dry seaweed
Strands of hair dancing about
ticklish
dark waves     dark water
Blue mountains     blue sea
Infinite skies     Blue    blue    blue
And the ocean too
Beloved blue earth

And beloved the green beneath that cold surface sheen
The path of hot white to the late afternoon sun
Feet at the end of lazy legs crossed one over the other
Did they ever look so right?

So right
White veils atop the swells
Blown over by hearty gusts
Hazy golden dream air
Hugging me so close
Something has bitten my ankle
It itches ferociously
My joy gentle joy
Laughs with delight

Like the fire in the sky that warms us
Seaweed-spangled rocks and
sand fleas and crabs
awaiting high tide……….
Is there anything like a crab?
Water air soft hard
We used to catch them and turn them over
to see if they were girls or boy
Underbellies with ridges like ripples in the sand
At low tide

Yellow flowing spark evening
Hot glow of it in my eyes
Close them. Feel it.
The shapes that dance in that
substanceless red
While wrapped in the blue coast air

Sea mountain sentinels
Sacred watch
Sky and earth
Family of treasure
Where does this come from,
This enthusiasmus
Specks of glitter in a big black round stone
A flicker of something good
Fairy dust from the days of open magic
no doubt
and right here and now
Glittering with Quality
in the brown algae pockets
and the mineral flecks
alike

This is my homage
so that I might not be driven mad
with love
Crash swish sigh
Shimmer burn glow
Whisper soft breeze and salt
Water spray
Let us love together

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Tegan Bethune

Autumnal Awe

Poems of Home