Autumnal 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.

Witch in the Closet

I’m a witch in the closet
I’ve forgotten where I hid my broom
Years ago
When they told me
Grow up

I’m a fairy at heart
Years ago I placed my wings
Inside a secret box and buried it
In the soft earthy belly of a thick green forest
Sometimes I forget
But I feel something is missing

One time I danced under the moonlight
I twirled and I sang
I laughed with the sheep in the field beside me
I nearly flew off the hilltop
And soared with the owls
Nearly

Sometimes I feel my pen is about to burst
Burst open with a thousand tales of my lost home
A thousand shimmering threads of every colour
To save me
To save us all
But ink is so thick and sticky

I’m a dreamer on the run
Searching for something
Just out of sight, just out of reach
Around one of these corners
It will all make sense

Around one of these corners
An ethereal bloom of light and flight
Another world
Fantastical creatures
A world protected by our vigil
By our glowing hands
From which sparks fly
Making magic

If I could write a thousand poems
If I could weave the lace for a thousand domes
If I could string them with drops of dew
If I could mold a ship for me and you
If I could set it asail among the stars
If I could reclaim what once was ours
Would you trust me and fly away?

Would I?

Let us make friends with our minds
With our hearts
Let us trust
So we may fly away at dusk

Silver sweet moonlight cold
And glistening
Please give me a potion for this moonsickness
So we may fly away at dusk
Back home

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