Mary Jane White: Rain, In Riverview Cemetery, Martins Ferry, Ohio
The rain
Already hangs a grey shawl in front of the blue domes of the Ohio
Greek Orthodox church, standing cheek by jowl by an industrial dairy.
Stephen Dobyns: Leaf Blowers
That autumn morning he awoke to the crying
of lost souls that quickly changed to the roar
of leaf blowers up and down the street
Arlene Weiner: November
He tears off summer’s dress,
exposes trunk and limb, threatens
worse coming. Yet he brings gifts…
Paul Christensen: The Rain It Raineth Every Day
They say the average cloud weighs about the same as eighty elephants. A big storm such as now darkens the sky overhead must be an infinite parade of elephants milling around in the dark gray pastures above us.
T.E. Hulme: Autumn
And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge
Like a red-faced farmer.
Robert Frost: “Out, Out—”
The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
James Wright: A Blessing
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
Paul Christensen: Summer’s End
Summer is like old gold, dark with age. You feel its strength become mellow and pliable in the soft breezes. There is wisdom in the heat that still simmers along the edges of noon, as if it were trying to tell us that illness or aging are as natural as drawing breath.
James Wright: Depressed by a Book of Bad Poetry, I Walk Toward an Unused Pasture and Invite the Insects to Join Me
The old grasshoppers
Are tired, they leap heavily now,
Their thighs are burdened.
I want to hear them, they have clear sounds to make.
Rick Campbell: Archeology
I have come a thousand miles for this. J&L’s ruins, a gravel plain on the Ohio’s west bank. There’s little left but an archeology of memory—smokestacks, ovens, foundry, smelter, slag. … Continue reading
John Keats: To Autumn
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To … Continue reading
Elizabeth Romero: Carrying a Sign
Leaves on the wind circle in the air Like emissaries from another world Frantic warnings No one heeds them, they Push toward their usual destinations With their everyday faces … Continue reading
Paul Christensen: After the Equinox
It’s fall here in southern France. The tourists have thinned out to a trickle of rubbernecks aiming their smart phones at almost anything green or shaggy with vines. They hardly … Continue reading
