‘Samhain- A Celtic Winter Song’, from “White Cranes of Heaven”

 

Autumn colors from my bathroom window today

 

–

It’s the first day of October and it couldn’t be more beautiful.  The air is cool, and the sun out, but not the blazing sun of summer.  Autumn hasn’t really hit yet, but there are some small changes in the landscape.  the kudzu patch behind us looks withered, but not from frost. It’s that seasonal dying off, after the flowering and the jam making. I missed that, again, this year and love that jelly. Maybe next year.

Autumn is my favorite season, something clean,  with great expectations for the peace, calm and silence of winter.  Yesterday I talked to my 100 year old plus Aunt Jean, who has fallen silent, at least to the pen.  She also feels an energy in the earth with this season.  That is good to know.  Something to look forward to with old age.

I wrote this poem a few years ago, during a time of great introspection and internal change.  I try to post it every Autumn.  It still has meaning a pull on me.

Lady Nyo

–

Dark mysterious season,

when the light doesn’t

quite reach the ground,

the trees shadow puppets

moving against the gray of day.

 

I think over the past year

praying there has been a

kindling in my soul,

the heart opened, warmed

and the juiciness of life is

more than in the loins–

a stream of forgiveness

slow flowing through the tough fibers

not stopper’d with an underlying

bitterness

but softened with compassion.

 

This season of constrictions,

unusual emptiness,

brittle like dried twigs

desiccated by hoar frost

just to be endured.

 

I wrap myself in wool and

watch the migrations–

first tender song birds which harken

back to summer,

then Sandhill cranes,

legs thin banners

streaming behind white bodies,

lost against a snowy sky.

 

They lift off to a middling cosmos,

while I, earth-bound,

can only flap the wings of my shawl,

poor plumage for such a flight,

and wonder about my  own destination.

 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2012, 2013