She is loveliest
the moment
before
she
fades.
— C.Birde, 10/16
Elder Maple — An Image
Lost in Thought — A Poem
Thoughts roost –
blackbirds
in leafless trees at
sunrise,
gloss-winged and
catching light,
throats lodged
tight with
songs unsung
that fall
unheard,
discarded
as dried leaves
rusting softly
back to
earth.
— C.Birde, 10/16
Autumn’s Kiss — An Image
Autumn’s scarlet kiss
rests lightly
on lichened
stone.
— C.Birde, 10/16
Moon Stroll — A Poem
The wide night’s
white eye
shines bright
and I
slip by
below
unnoticed
but
for minstrel
crickets
who cease,
midway,
their
spacious
Autumn
song
to retrieve
anew
once I
have moved
along.
— C.Birde, 10/16
Autumn Door — An Image
Thresholds
and doorways spied
from the corner
of one’s eye —
step off the long-trod path
into the arms
of
Autumn.
— C.Birde, 10/16
be-SEA-ch — A Poem
Hold me.
Smooth the seams from
my brow
with a song,
your voice —
cool and blue and constant —
a frill
against my ear.
Take my grief,
the ballast trapped
within heart and head and
too-narrow frame.
Lift it.
Erode it,
with patient certainty,
as the shells and stones
that lace your shore.
Scour all to
glittering, gathering sand
that gives beneath each step,
then lifts and
blows and
scatters.
— C.Birde, 10/16
Wild Raspberry — An Image
Thorny wild raspberry,
whip limbs free of bright fruit,
stretches skyward
in recollection
of Summer.
— C.Birde, 10/16
Ghost of Hickory — A Poem
A lifetime ago,
crouched together
in the graveled drive,
swathed within
the hickory’s mutable shade,
we small creatures gathered
that straight-torsoed tree’s
green-hulled spheres.
Flesh rusted
beneath nails’ crescents,
we peeled and prized,
released the small,
smooth spheroids within.
With teeth,
with stones clutched
and knuckled,
we shattered
the inner carapaces,
picked
crenelated chambers
free of sweet nut meat
to eat
and left behind
haphazard patterns
of heaped
discarded shells.
The hickory was felled
half a lifetime later,
for raining nuts on
the car parked below.
And my small creature’s heart,
nested within the adult’s,
fissured,
broke.
— C.Birde, 10/16
Autumn Rain — An Image
Autumn rain —
a deep breath
after hectic Summer;
a vivid
and saturated
respite.
— C.Birde, 10/16
Winged Promise — A Poem
To rest
heart and head and bone
on pink-shouldered,
pink-hipped stone
laced gray with lichen,
and to see,
beyond the summit’s
curved, granite lip,
the peregrine arise —
winged wish
within the vast blue sky.
He dives,
snatches and tatters
the day’s cares –-
the week’s
the month’s
the year’s –-
in beak and talon.
A sun-soaked,
wind-tossed
promise.
— C.Birde, 9/16