Autumnal poems

 

 

Poetics

 

Holding breath until the car

turns over, bending to unleash

a dog, leaning for a moment

into autumn winds, while

a half-raked leaf pile

loses a few at its edges. . . .

 

We could honor the future

by sculpting such likely attitudes.

 

Quite enough dauntless equestrians

ride roughshod over this world,

explorers peering past

the map margins, mythic lumberjacks

and their house-high oxen.

And plenty of ashcan epiphanies.

 

Give me rather the shakers

of pepper, women with hairdos,

little brothers waxing car hoods,

the hunched, blinkered walk

of a man reading his mail--

all without rejoicing, no bank

of violins infected with tribute. 

 

Just a simple off-key

work whistle, an absentminded

humming such as any

summer meadow, any city sidewalk

diffuses into calm air.

 

 

 

 

--© David Graham

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Man and Dog, Trespassing

 

 

He's off on some illicit scent, deaf to my shrill whistle,

and I'm on his tail through someone else's woods,

ignoring trail and blaze.  Yet who owns the wind,

this hazy light, turkey tracks and whip of squirrel tail?

Who owns the autumn chill, the slowing pulse?

 

A dozen curiosities in any deadfall.  Now a feral cat

perched on a fallen log, gazing calmly

till we both turn to breeze and vanish, man and dog,

as she knew we would.  Who owns distant deer snort

and acorns plocking to the ground at our feet?

 

Mushrooms flare orange as any nightmare,

white jawbone of a coon melted free from time.

Summer's lease hath been erased by fallen leaves.

Who owns the way we might have gone and didn't?

 

There's no point not walking here today, tomorrow,

scuffing wet duff, distinguishing twig crackle

and wind from something else, one man and dog

marking their own vanishing trail.  Signs nailed

to trees mutter Keep Out, of course, but it's too late

for that, isn't it?  Disobedience the only way home.

 

 

 

--© David Graham

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Black Walnut

 

 

Nuts fall to our roof--ploop!--then hit

ground or pavement and roll to a stop.

Every other autumn the walnut goes

a little crazy and fills the yard with more

 

than we can handle:  road-sign green,

nearly the size of tennis balls, each nut

enclosed in an acrid husk that stains fingers,

rots to a smelly mess in the sparse grass,

 

kills most of the flowers around.  Inside

are the hard brown brains of the tree;

it takes a squirrel's razory teeth to open one.

We need pliers.  Hardly worth the effort,

 

which is why bags and bags of them go

to the landfill for worms and bacteria

to open, earth itself feasting.  Once in a while

I crack one just to feel I live here,

 

rooted amid chittering squirrels who claim

our roof and rain gutters.  I do not feed

on walnuts so much as the idea of them,

the way they lift a squirrel's twitchy tail

 

like seasonal clockwork and reliable sun.

The way they can prove once again

what needs no proving, that we fall, that

earth opens to receive, that we fill and fall.

 

 

 

--© David Graham

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Migrations

 

 

Good place to raise kids, we all say on cue,

the merest tilt of an eyebrow to betray

the anthology of defeat we fear and embrace:

that butcher of a surgeon still in business

decade after decade, our mayor

running unopposed again, every Friday barstool

topped with a Dad blown wide and far

from his windiest backfield dreams.

 

Not true that our dogs yelp in polite tones

or that our bluejays turn mild as doves.

Yet in Time Capsule Corner our weekly paper

re-runs stories preserved down the years:

drug store fender bender, sewer line uproar,

Rotary officers clapping themselves on the back

as they send some boy off amid flashbulbs

to Munich or Madrid.  That boy who never

came back, as we knew he wouldn't.

 

He never hunched over the barbecue

in a ten year old varsity letter jacket

or joined the EMT squad.  No, he moved

to Chicago, married a lovely girl who won't be

caught dead at the League of Women Voters.

 

Which is all exactly what we hoped he'd do,

not that hoping makes things happen

or eases our hearts when it does.  We jam

our hands deep in our jacket pockets, sniff

the first brisk air of autumn, and listen:

geese far overhead yelping like a schoolyard.

 

 

 

--© David Graham

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David Graham

grahamd@ripon.edu

 

Home Page:

http://web.mac.com/drjazz

 

Poetry Library:

http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/DGPoLibrary.html

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