November haiku
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dead grass stems shiver
cold cloudy sun
the feeling of snow
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small yellow butterfly
fluttering through falling leaves
November wind
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cold November wind
the last samaras spinning down
like first flakes of snow
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autumn morning rain
patio a broken sky mirror:
endless water rings
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November rain—
black and silver skeletons
empty dripping trees
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another autumn
birthday in prison
he relishes the cake
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strong, gifted hands—
handling scalpels
and bales of hay
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now there’s a haiku:
old wet donkey going doo-doo
autumn morning rain
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an autumn lunch
with four felons
how rich their laughter
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mullein leaves, silver
after hard night rain, red oaks
the color of blood
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night storm, breaking….
all the bright leaves torn down…
the taste of coffee
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storm clouds, parting
autumn pansies, shivering
cold morning wind
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autumn afternoon
they tear down the old bridge…
such long shadows
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vast shining blue
November morning sky
one whitethroat singing
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autumn morning sun
summer’s empty spider silks
glistening
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now they’ve fallen
how very quiet, how still
the year’s leaves
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cold autumn sun
ragged spider silks, shining
the harsh music of crows
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how deep, the centuries
red stone canyons
shaped by wind, rain, silence
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after arguing
how harsh the chimes—
cold November wind
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autumn morning wind
sipping tea, letting go
the need to think, to know
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the risen sun
shimmering windy waters
millions of sun pieces
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now the leaves are fallen
how much brighter shines
the bare autumn land
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eyes closed—
windy tree shadows
the smell of smoke, north wind
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cold November wind
blows through the marsh, gray trees
singing with sparrows
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her older sister arriving
tomorrow, my wife
rakes leaves until dark
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standing by the lake
talking with friends, cold wind
rattles the maples
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November clouds
darken with dusk, brighten
a thin sickle of moon
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windless mountain lake
quiet water, ancient stone
deep November sky
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November dusk
dark clouds, gathering
doves on bare limbs
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autumn morning wind
scraping dead leaves, tossing
empty tree shadows
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the great oak lights up
one twig at a time
cold November dawn
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–Quilla
Moments from November. . .
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From my nature journal, November 5: A mild and moist November morning, no wind, low clouds, the pungent smell of fallen leaves. Most of the brighter leaves were torn down by recent windy rains. Only the tall pear tree in the lower garden lifts its limbs with fire colors, like painted flames of praise, into the somber morning light.
With a wide variety of subtle textures and sounds, rich browns, rust and deep maroons, late autumn quietly thrills us, if we give ourselves the present of pausing, listening, actually seeing the kaleidoscopic world whirling around us. November calls us to quiet our hurried hearts, to appreciate the natural rhythm of the seasons, this waning of the natural year. There is an essential ebb and flow, rising and falling, a delicate timing for everything. We enjoy the annual cycle in the bright pageantry of passing flowers—from the first snow-white bloodroot blossom in the late-winter woods, to the last pale asters lacing the edges of November.
Across the oyster shell of morning sky, a ragged stream of vultures flows silently from east to west. They’re flying out of night-roost deep in a pine grove behind the old white clapboard Methodist church. These dark wide-winged scavengers fan out over the land with ghoulish silhouettes, soaring in all directions with sharp eyesight and keen sense of smell, scouring the roadsides, farmlands and riverbanks for dead animals.
“Buzzards” perform a necessary sanitation service, cleansing the land of decaying flesh. Their gut is specially designed to handle the deadly bacteria breaking down the carrion. In this cathartic process, the fallen energy of death is transformed, lifted into the aerial life of vultures and passed on, nourishing the hungry earth, which feeds everything under the sun. Only bones are left, to bleach in the sun and snow, gnawed by woods-mice for the mineral salts. I stand in awe of the wisdom and quiet majesty revealed in the interwoven layers and rhythms of the created world.
October 31: The last of my fifteen uncles died this week. After his funeral, late this afternoon I walk across the autumn fields alone under windy gray skies. Crows are calling in the distance. Summer trees have become skeletons again. Cold wind tears down the last gold and crimson leaves.
November 6: A pleasant “Indian Summer” afternoon, late-autumn, the sun descends slowly through the bare trees, making long thin shadows. Above the garden a glistening ball of midges spins up and down, revolving in the warm air. I hear the high whistling of whitethroat sparrows again, returned just this week from nesting far to the north. They are here for the colder months, lilting wistful songs all winter. A slight breeze rises and falls, making a dry whisper of November leaves—a sound like someone stepping softly through the empty woods, walking away…..
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–Quilla
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–Quilla
November 3.15
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In Passing…..
Ogle, Filkins, Weaver, Banks…..old mountain names
carved in upright slabs of stone, facing east.
Weathering shadow-letters, chiseled numbers
of their brief years help us remember them
and let them go.
The cold gray stones want us
to have new faces, to find fresh ways
each passing moment
to love the ones still here.
November sun, rises
through bare trees. Morning wind
spins the last leaves down.
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–Quilla
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November 13.14
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November Morning
38 degrees. The white sky thickens, lowering
shadow over the drab shadowless land.
A rousing east-wind shakes the stems, stirs
the tall seed-plumes of dead grasses
whispering something….
From the chimney, wood smoke tumbles west.
The curled and rusted oak leaves
still clinging to their branches
mutter secrets among themselves
like the old ones who’ve mostly given up—
—thin voices, rasping something
of hard weather, something of snow.
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–Quilla
November 21…….Thanksgiving eve
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Praise
The low sun of late November
feels faintly warm, welcome now
uplifted face, and hands.
Fingers of wan, yellow light
search the bare and shining trees,
weaving soft grey plaids of shadow.
Chill winds rattle the stalks of dead weeds.
Someone, not quite seen, quietly walks
the floor of fallen leaves, speaking
certain stark words, of winter.
The grey hulks of mountains have gone
back inside themselves again, old monks
huddled under the mauve and umber wool
of sleeping woods.
Cloud shadows cast themselves across
the folded, fallen slopes—all the brief summers
centuries have passed.
I lift my hands again into the Light
—this low, late autumn light—
speaking certain words of thanks
for all the beauty I have known.
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–Quilla
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“Through Him, then, let us
continually offer up a sacrifice of praise
to God, that is, the fruit of lips
that give thanks to His name.”
–Hebrews, chapter 13, verse 15
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Riding the Back Roads
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Peaceful farm in autumn light, Possumtrot Creek, Yancey County NC
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For the column ‘Roaming around Yancey’
The Yancey Journal and Common Times
– by Robert Towe, Naturalist
“Riding the Back Roads” November 10, 2012
Yes, the face of Yancey is changing, and rapidly. At least that face most residents, visitors, and tourists see—the highway corridor giving access to our rugged, mountain-rimmed county, and to the ‘outside’ world. The widening of that route proceeds as the ancient mountain land is blasted and graded down to make room for it. Like most, I will enjoy the benefits of the four-lane. Yet I am also saddened a bit: by the road itself, altering the landscape forever; even more, by some of the changes that result from better access to places of natural beauty. It appears these things are inevitable.
But let’s get off the big road. We have better places to go. These blue and auburn days of late autumn are some of the finest of the natural year. Winding along the county back roads, we view a patchwork quilt of scenes. The cool clear air still has a wistful softness to it, as the year’s warmth drifts away like golden Monarch butterflies, or thistledown on the wind. . . The leaves have fallen. November’s low light and purple shadows reveal the underlying bones of the earth.
Working with mountain acreage includes the ongoing enjoyment of driving the country roads. I see a wide range of farm and forest properties, and meet a rich variety of individuals who live and work closely with the land. Interesting folk, with stories to tell. We have much to learn from those who grow things. They are often watching the sky, their daily lives are closely interwoven with mountain weathers, and with the lives of plants and animals drawing sustenance from the sun and the fertile soil. Indeed, some of our more unique residents have purposely hidden their lives off the beaten paths.
Most rural roads still wind alongside meandering courses of streams. That’s where the first settlers hewed out wagon tracks in the early to mid-1800’s, to take them from headwater homesteads to the rough-sawn muddy village of Burnsville. Many roads and creeks still carry the names of the original families who settled them.
Our roads were widened from much older paths of the Woodland Peoples, who traveled these same streamside trails for thousands of years. Bits and pieces left from their lives keep rising to the furrowed surface of bottomland loam. We hold the primitive pot-shards and arrow points in our hands, and wonder. . .
With all our visual and ecological impact, we Anglos are recent arrivals. How much knowledge and wisdom have been lost from the unpublished pages of the recent and ancient past. I admire those who attempt to discover and preserve the richly layered human record. Countless generations rise from the nourishing land, living daily upon it, returning to it at last.
So these same streamside back roads that we rush down each day have deep slow histories. The timeless waters often run shallow this season, with less precipitation. Rock ledges and beds of tumbled river stones are now exposed to the chill dry light. Soon this will change, as late autumn rains and winter snows return to the high country, draining into the network of tributaries filling the Toe and the Cane.
Along with stream levels, the sun itself is also lowering. Mountain shadows lengthen across the valleys. Until December 22, the northern half of Earth keeps tilting further away from the closest star. Daylight hours shorten, nights grow increasingly longer. Thus the air, the surface waters, and the land itself all cool down, as solar heat declines. The high ridges looming above us will be coated again with rime. Snow crystals come spinning down, and something buried deep in us wakes up and briefly becomes a child once more, excited about the fierce beauty, the delicate wonders of winter.
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Tree shadows, old rough-sawn barn
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A quiet stretch along the Toe (Estatoe) River, northern Yancey County NC
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Starlight and Rivercliffs
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Starlight and Rivercliffs
If a weathered autumn scrap of man
should ask: some lean scraps of beauty
or of truth, to feed his hungered soul
his mind, this cold and leaning light
of withered old November—
shortened days and longing shadows,
—what can he expect?
When his tender heart rattles
like a coiled snake, dry river rocks
and autumn’s seed-pods
all that’s gone awry: the world,
the nation, the Church, his loved ones
and his own dreams, what, pray tell
does he dare expect, of God?
Brilliant winter stars emerge
like far-flung words of grace, across
the universe, at dusk:
salt grains of light, fall each night
like diamonds of quiet praise,
sparkling the darkling river, ever.
Cold rapids are rushing full, and white.
Starlight crystals glimmer on the shoals—
—they sing a river’s frothy love
the long night, illumined lyrics of joy
to the tall black rivercliffs, breaking
breaking slowly, slowly down
to sand, the glittering peace
of starlight, stardust, sand.
This is just the way
love always has and will
come to us, forever.
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–Quilla
Turning the Page…..
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November First
I turn the page
of the large flat desk calendar.
Another month is gone.
Stuffing in the trash, the old page—
its dates and doodles, numbers, names
—I notice October’s spilled tea-stains
bled through into the future:
November’s unlived page.
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–Quilla
November Thirteenth
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For Cairn
Today I cut down all the stems of dead flowers
cultivated and watered for you
through the long warm months.
I rake their sad rattling bodies together,
gather them into large armloads,
carry them to a pile to be burned.
You ask me to cut the last few roses
that escaped the frost.
You take the year’s final bouquet,
and give it to an old dear friend.
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—Quilla
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“Those who sow in tears shall reap
with joyful singing.
He who goes to and fro weeping
shall indeed come again with a shout
of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.”
—Psalm 126: vs 5&6
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November Twelfth
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Faces
Deep November.
Surrounded by darkening forests
the faces of pale fields rest now,
radiate the softer light.
In the same way
Rembrandt’s tender faces
gaze at us from deep shadow
with love, with sorrow, with truth.
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–Quilla
“In Him we move, and live, and have our being.
For we are his children.”
–Acts 17: vs 28
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November Hill. . . . . .(11.28.10)
A cold bright afternoon. I am looking at the large, wind-stripped White Oak on the far hillside.
The light shines through it now, all bare and looking like smoke. Every last leaf of that 1800’s tree
—all hundred thousands of them—lies curled and shining on the drab November ground.
The leaves have scattered out among the tree’s vast web of hillside shadows. All the leaves together
flicker little blazes of the slanting light, like wind blowing across open waters. We remember warmer
days, deeper shades of green.
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I stretch my right arm to the south like a primitive astrolabe, fingers together, pointing up.
A little more than three weeks until Solstice, the noon sun stands just one hand’s height above
the crown of the oak. So the tree shadows stretch out now, long blue strokes, sloping down the
hillside of dead grass, waiting for snow. Somewhere in the silence of the oak shadows we hear
low piano notes, played softly with the left hand. The larger limbs of the tree cast grotesque
shapes onto the land, splayed out like the arms of dancers whose music has ended.
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Of course these wild things mirror clearly the forms and rhythms echoing within:
summer leaves we know have blown from our tender hearts; every human, reaching like
shadows, into the falling light, the fields of late autumn, feeling keenly the need to give away
their love.
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Late-autumn sketch: Burnsville’s Town Square
Summer is long past gone, and even the brilliant ‘leaf season’ has blown away again. A bright day with cool wind.
I’m sitting at a sidewalk table on Main Street, savoring a cup of rich ‘Black Widow’ coffee served by the local
Java shop. The small town square at noon lies quiet and empty in the longer shadows of late autumn, as if
resting from the long tourist season. A steeple rings its faithful noontime chimes. The town’s surrounding
worn brick and wooden walls echo the tones. More than a century, some of these buildings have stood like
sentries, as if still guarding the town square from wilderness attack. Ironic, how the wild lands now need
protecting from the invasive settlement.
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I look around and realize again how I’ve loved this small mountain town, this county, many years. It was the
primitive village of my mother’s people, since muddy wagon paths wandered out of the deep woods homesteads
of the eighteen-hundreds.
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Traffic rumbles around and through the town: hay and cattle trucks, diesel pickups hauling tractors,
business people on lunch hour, and off-season tourists, looking for something that likely doesn’t live here,
or anywhere. Perhaps it’s just getting away, the sojourning that matter. Taking back a story or two of new places
and people to remember. Something to tell the folks back home.
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The last leathery leaves shiver in the empty trees along the streets. The wind makes a watery sound in
the dead leaves, like summer fountains. The bare mountains rise above the town, wrapping their ancient bony
shoulders in gray shawls and purple shadows. Everything seems hunkered down, waiting for another
winter to blow into town.
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The statue of Otway Burns stands vigilant in full uniform, brandishing a sword and a little bronze horn,
fading green with verdigris. On the town flagpole the loose, striped fabric flutters the cool afternoon wind.
The flag-rope rings and rings against the metal pole, as if still celebrating our liberation from England,
and all the wars we’ve waged since then.
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Or could the insistent ringing of the flagrope be heard as a small alarm—counting the moments in the life-span
of a nation, asking the uneasy question: with so many treacherous enemies bent on our demise, how long can
this costly and casual freedom last?
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I pondered the tough question a few moments. But neither the flag, nor the traffic, nor the old buildings, nor the
ancient mountains themselves, not even the sky could give the answer. I finished my coffee, and remembered the
words of a modern day prophet: “the answer, my friend, is blowin in the wind. The answer is blowin in the wind.”
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What Can One Say?
What can one say—after all that’s gone, and come before this somber autumn day?
Sweet woodsmoke curls again above the frost. Fragrant scarves unfurl from the chimney
the warm feminine scent of shelter, of touch and cherished recollections—are these
all but lost?
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Please say to me what one can say—when it seems the only birds left are crows, snarling beyond
the closed windows, harsh black caws in the oaks all day, that winter talk in the darkened woods.
When just a few tough leaves of summer linger, like closed scarlet hands, like claws of frozen blood?
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What can one say—when what we fear is far too much to feel, much less, to talk about. But tell me
anyway: this time of year when we know that we are older, fragile and infirm, wandering further apart;
and a colder wind starts moaning again through the naked woods of each November heart?
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What can one say—when gazing straight into the mouth of the storm-darkened North
through stripped birch trees, their thin, sere limbs shaking down the last gold leaves?
And silver balalaika tunes come quivering into our midnight rooms, weeping the agonies
of arguments and war, the tender vanquished joy of human love?
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—Please tell me, while we’re waiting here with opened hands, another winter stalking down
the tundra sky with fear, the grey howls of hungry wolves tearing across the humbled land;
and we can’t help but see what’s been shattered, burned and damned, what can one truly say?
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—Only this, but surely this with certain faith: out of the rubble, ravage, greed and death, the untold wastes:
One has risen, a Star at dawn among these fluttering candle flames, these broken reeds, redeeming what’s been
lost. His radiance is gleaming pure, above and beyond all time.
So find His beauty in His truth: a perfect Love that burns in the smoking fragments, the fleeting faces,
in all the moments that shine.
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Ruach 333, by Quilla 