Perhaps I should offer my hand to Autumn And open the doors to the liminal wayfares that once frightened me Risk all, since limiting my risks has left me circling and failing, Circling and failing. Will I learn to rule my traveling, as I once had the courage to dream To stand with one foot in each of two worlds, and craft a life in between? To live is to question, to wonder, To wander far from where we started And I am not done asking. But this road goes nowhere; I am travel-weary and footsore Ending up back where I began with less than I once claimed. So I will seek the Crossroads, turn deosil And not look back. Behind is only ashes and bones: signposts for other travelers.
Leaves, and leaves, and gloaming leaves Their summer secrets keeping The telltale turn of autumn hints Within September sleeping Smoke and oak and barley wine The harvest moon in slow decline The fading hush of passing cars The brittle bite of distant stars.
I soak up sleep like sand.
Grain by grain, the mountains of imagination wear down
Down beneath the changing dunes of dreams
Down behind the grit of weary eyes
Creation stirs in nameless colors
Even the desert blooms, every once in a while
When all the storms have passed.
The labyrinth, a spiral holding
Life in limbo, fold refolding
Paper hearts, worn in creases
Make remaking lives in pieces
Wandering the sulci, gyri
Dream the symbols on papyri
Circling the inner keep
Enfolding fraught and fettered sleep
Patterns circumscribe my mind
Beyonding left to look behind
I contemplate that which I make
Unfold it, stuttering awake
The days are waning steeper
Sliding down the thinning light
To darkness, sharper, deeper
December drowns in night
Beneath the aching frost
Across my heart, the raven’s wing
The silent hours’ threshold crossed
The candled seeds of spring