When the Leaves Come Calling

Only when the world is young, do the leaves come calling.
Soft, and warm, and white with the light as they drift through morning.
In the depths of a valley of mist and silence,
Where the corn shifts on at the blackbird's warning.
Dark men of the west in their coats of feathers,
With the paths of autumns, gone-by Septembers;
Things left forgotten in the wild, dim evening,
Brooks overgrown no footstep remembers.
Gray windows and doorways are sinking, dismembered
Like so many plows when they came to be rusted;
Human habitable places have crumbled,
Shot with the filtered brown sun, softly dusted.
"Cooper", "Smith" graves, no faces, no birthdates,
Only the worn stones that move through the falling
Of twilight and wind that blows frost in their grasses
When the world is young, and the leaves come calling.

Stars in the Sky Speak

If the stars were to speak, I would know what they'd say,
That since their creation, the world's gone away.
It has drifted and faded in sorrow and fire
And left behind slivers of ancient desire.
If the stars were to speak, I would know what they'd say:
That love has been gone since the dawn of their day,
And wisdom has stayed in the peace of the brooks
With neither a notch nor a stroke in men's books.
If the stars were to speak, I would know what they'd say;
The world once knew light, but they wandered away.

When Autumn Comes Calling

If only I could go away and never return;
When the leaves begin to spin from autumn trees,
I think I shall come away from this, this that never was my own,
And see a freedom that my current self must not see.
I would hold the golden fragrance of the sun within my hand,
I would keep it, and never let it go,
Cemented things that broke my heart I would soon forget,
When I walked down paths soaked silently in climbing growth.
On that wide wall, his look would not be there,
On that white shore, her madness would be gone,
I would walk alone with neither step nor stair
To climb, or any vice or virtue to condone.

Shall I

Away, away, shall I sail away?
To the open sea, and its open shore,
And the waves and the sun beating on, evermore.
Away, away, shall I fly away?
To the stretching sky, and its vast blue dome,
And the silent black midst where the comets roam.
Away, away, shall I roam away?
To the golden hill, and its crest of wheat
And the valley which knows neither face nor feet.
Away, away, shall I go away?
To the diamond cloud, and its glimmering gate
And the Prince who commands every spirit's fate.

Pictures Only Tell So Much

A picture paints a memory,
A tree can paint a word,
When autumn leaves are glimmering
Across the flowing ford.
A shutter takes a memory,
But fields can make a name
Blow on in spirits shimmering
When lost is lens and lane.

A Glance Towards Hope

The darkness drove me to a corner of the world;
No woe was there, no hopelessness, no hate:
It pressed its softest touch against my face
And made it pure with love and grace.
There it held the race of men who had died in vain,
The cruel wars, the suicide which brought us tears;
There it flowed with peaceful tides across a plain
All veiled in beauty past the troubled years.
I tore a page of verses from its heart
And printed in my cursive mind its lights,
Soft-swaying, hung with fruits as ripe as dreams,
Which never knew the winter's waxen blights.
I cherished it with such a passion, in a breath
So full of hope where hope had never been;
And when the soldiers of despair retire,
I see salvation in the place where once was sin.

Final Summer Acorn

The summer sun has passed away,
Long since the wind went by the bay
And drew its arms across the sky
In some embrace---we wonder why.
Why does this life, with all its joy
Its budding green the leaves employ
Have to die now, when we were set
On dreams that now are cold and wet?
This funeral home of browning trees,
This hibernation of blooms and bees---
It is the murder of life and hope
That gave us once the calm to cope.
Autumn has changed the blowing weed,
Burnt black the fallen, wheaten seed,
And now there is thinness in the air
Where beauty once laid recumbent there.
If only we could take the final nut
And seal it, before the winter cut
We could see the sun in its shimmering skin
And know that summer will come again.