Umbrella Journeys
by Odin odin@aflx.com — Read all 3,869 poems by Odin odin@aflx.com
As my favorite season sets in, I couldn’t help but wonder if Gliese 581 G (c’mon, scientists, you can do better than that for a name), if and when it ever realizes an exploration, might display a different sense of Nature? Of all the ways we could list our own planet’s failures, certainly everyone is in agreement with the seasons ability to thrive and survive—a testimony to Nature’s ability to “keep it together” What a cycle of wonderment. Then, of course, there's man's own seasonal moods, trying like hell to ignore the sanctity of the natural world. (Image by Flicker)
Saturday, October 21, 2017
Umbrella Journeys
What's left of life's dandelion smiles?
Keen eyes capture
lift-off by gusty winds,
dispatching goodbyes,
these flights of fall's minuscule celebrations
some see as only subtle remembrances.
To fields and grasses,
these umbrella journeys
fold into Nature's carpet-nap
where dry and littered
golds,
reds,
yellows,
find rest from summer's repeat of a hesitant past.
Veins now brittle, still shout their greetings.
Leaf’s rainbow curling,
costumed stem to tip
scurry left and right,
knowing their palette's 4th movement
is but life’s intermission awaiting another trumpeted 1st movement.
Vigilance awaits these floating waifs
of a child's gleeful exhalation,
such joy sending aloft wispy orphans of sunshine,
changelings of chance,
ever trusting the bounty of Nature’s unconditional love.
Transition
So goes the innocence of one’s natural world anticipation.
Often beleaguered and spent
by vacations ended,
tears hold at the next season's doorstep.
Back-to-school children poise sad,
but still hopeful.
Parents plunge into lapsed time at work,
resigned to freedom’s interlude as guilt.
Singles set up shop,
power insisting the forgetting of yesterday's
warm sands,
fragrant pines,
diamond clear waters.
Yes.
Rushing we go,
begging sunlit emotions stay alive,
even as life's inevitable gray pallor
enfolds those who resist Nature’s need for changes.
Resentment imprisons vacation’s joyful weeping
made dry as summer's carefree moisture and memories
vanish amidst digits and keyboards,
screens and commerce.
Challenged, we continue to roam
from summer's sun and clouds,
to rail and street,
sidewalk and stairwells,
often seeing ourselves as ghosts
of Nature's tease-o-rama invitation.
Just as winter's respite
nurtures new life into earth's slumber,
so too can man's sunless tears
become new tributaries of hope,
a purge cascading down faces made bright
by the child in us all,
that part that sees everything as adventure,
as a new experience,
as growth.
How easy for some to forget
umbrella journeys possess many iterations.
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I can still smell the pungent smoke of leaves burning in the clear, crisp air. And I can still smell the slower burning of decay in the forest taking its own sweet time to turn the fallen leaves into fertilizer for future trees after providing a blanket of insulation against the harsh winter ahead.
Many phrases and many memories… Thank you.
Ron