Vox Populi
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Byron Hoot: Two Poems About Fall
Ghost-walking
It is fall and ghosts walk
in the wind among fallen
leaves, mist, and fog more
easily than any other time
of the year — the season
of visitation of the dead:
people, desires, dreams,
the what-if conclusions
never realized. In any given
moment, a ghost can brush
a heart as it passes by.
That which never dies walks
upon the earth September,
October, and November
and then the winter dreams.
~~~~
Present For a Moment
The morning is like a Monet painting. The fog
has blurred the edges of trees and roads,
the colors of grass and trees and sky.
The leaves are shrinking as well and the sun
shines through those new and growing gaps,
those leaves who could not wait for the first
frost of fall falling like scouts bringing news
of what’s ahead. And the sacred silence of Sunday
morning is everywhere and will burn off like the fog
in a while leaving only memory and the sense
I may have missed something even as I was
taking the morning in. And somehow that sense
creates a longing for what I see and feel to be
utterly seen and felt, known, caught in that phrase,
“In the fullness of time.” Those moments all have
and the wonder that fills that time, the desire
its passing creates. The way the heart and soul
and mind are never the same afterward, the impossibility
to create a memory like this morning
as it passes by in that sense that forever
has just found a way to be present for a moment.
~~~
~~~
Born and raised in Morgantown, West Virginia, Byron Hoot now lives alone in the wilds of Pennsylvania. His books include Setting Moon Morning Twilight: Predawn Meditations.
Copyright 2024 Byron Hoot
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“to create a memory like this morning
as it passes by in that sense that forever
has just found a way to be present for a moment.”
Yes!
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Thank you for reminding me. On my side of the world we are entering spring/summer. I so much want to wade through russet and russling fallen leaves again.
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rustling
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I don’t know if it is all or academic, but when a poem expresses emotions, longing, thoughts I have not been able to catch with words, that is when I know why I read poetry. These get to that sense of unknown I feel every fall. Thank you.
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I like Byron’s poems for the reasons you give, Barbara. They take me places I almost recognize but not quite.
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Like Jim, I loved the wind walking like a ghost, so that it could “brush a heart as it passes by.”
And “Present for a Moment” is such a quietly moving meditative poem!
Two melancholy poems in a melancholy month…
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two lovely looks at Fall .the wind walking like a ghost through the leaves is a classic insight.
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