“Autumn Poem of mid November”,

 

Sunset in a Violent Sky, copyrighted, 2007, janekohut-bartels, watercolor

Recently I had the particular joy of having Nick Nicholson in our home for a number of days.  Nick is an old friend, or at least one of 7 plus years.  We met when we both were new writers on a particular website (ERWA) and through those hard years learned something about writing.  Nick was on holiday from Canberra, Australia.  He had spent around five weeks touring Paris, Venice, Prague, New York City, and then he came to us in Atlanta.  We didn’t get much sleep over those four days.  In part it was because we were working on a new book together.  Nick has offered to do the cover and photos (graphics, etc.) of “The Nightingale’s Song”, and I couldn’t  be happier. This is the first time in 5 books that I have had a collaborator.  It’s a different experience, and it helps that Nick is someone who is so larded with gifts.  He is a musician, painter, writer, poet and also a crack photographer.  He sent some shots of an afternoon’s work in a local park in Canberra, and just about everyone of these pictures could be used in “Nightingale”.  I was overwhelmed with the riches of his imagination and camera. Nick took back the manuscript and when his part of the work is done, it will be published from Australia.  Maybe later this winter, maybe this spring.  I’m not worried.  In Nick’s capable hands, it will be a better book than with the vision and poetry of just one.

Lady Nyo

 

 

Autumn Poem of mid November,

 

This waning Autumn season,

That bursts upon the mindscape

Through the vehicle of landscape

And mingles dazzling elements

Of color, odors, tangled undergrowth,

Where things are lost in each other

And plausible limits vanish,

And with the passage of days,

Or  a violent rainstorm—

The Earth is transformed in scarcity,

A stretching silence

Insulated by hoar frost and later snow,

Where color is corralled

Like old black and white horses

Barely moving against bitter grey of day.

 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2013