This Late October Light
*
*
*
*
Looking downstream on the Cane River in late October, Yancey County NC
*
*
*
“This Late October Light”
From my nature journal: Overnight, frost returns to the mountains. The stillness of dawn sparkles cold violet-blues, emerging from shadow. Winter colors. Crisp frozen leaves, falling, whisper down the empty trees, quickly shedding another summer. This is how the brief years pass.
Late in the night I woke to a Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus) booming his seven-note staccato chant from the oak woods near our home. I’d left the bedroom window open a few inches. For several minutes I listened to the wild autumn night-music haunting the darkness. In the distance, like velvet black curtains stirring, the river sighs soft and low. Then I drifted back into dreams. Although indigenous peoples often attributed evil portent to owls, and many modern people never even hear them, I am drawn like a child to the mysteries resonating in owls’ evocative songs. I hear a wild created glory in the hollow tones calling from dark woods—folded feathers and talons opening, falling fierce and silent through the deep October night.
All morning, cold brisk winds from the north are rising in the trees, tearing gusts of leaves loose, swirling like large flocks of small birds. A thick sky of heavy slate-gray stratocumulus presses down, rolling over the shadowy land. The higher ridges are getting dusted with early snow. Our first taste of winter. An even heavier frost is called for tonight, clouds dissipating and the wind settling, like a soft blue quilt of down. A brief warm friendship, another summer has slipped quietly down the trail behind us. We watch her turn and go, know we can not prevent her leaving.
These gold October mountains fade softly in the falling light, longer shadows. A bit earlier each evening, mauves of purpling darkness wash the hollows. Now the wind makes different sounds in the standing corn, dry leaves scrape the rattling stalks. Birds have gleaned the oil-rich seeds from tall sunflower heads bowing toward the ground, no longer following the sun. Their bright yellow petals have withered and blown. In country dooryard gardens, large cups of Dahlia blooms the color of Burgundy wine bring us a shallowing joy, these deepening days of fall. Between autumn equinox (over a month ago) and the solstice in late December, we’re given these mellowing brandy weeks to reflect, and to prepare. Across the opening yawn of morning, a chain saw gnaws the winter’s wood.
Today I’m traveling alongside a rapid mountain river, to place a sign on a remote property to the north. Over rushing waters and boulders, gray skeletons of dead Hemlocks (Tsuga canadensis) stand like monuments. They are dying from the ravages of an exotic aphid-like insect—a tiny adelgid killing countless thousands of this lacy Appalachian evergreen. I place the For Sale sign in the ground near the locked farm gate, and head back down the river. With the windows down, the cool air is rich with that certain brief fragrance of autumn leaves.
My way winds back toward the settlements. Another autumn blowing away into the wind, I cherish my bonds to these ancient mountains and its peoples. Resilient genetic threads are woven deep within, from several generations of pioneering mountain folk and with the Cherokee themselves. Yet I also count myself rich with the ongoing discovery of new places, fresh ways of seeing creation revealed—in faces, spoken words, the bright and the darker seasons, shapes of mountain art and sweet potatoes dug from the autumn earth.
Leaving the river gorge, I stop at the vegetable stand of Davis Farms on the Cane River Road. These rural farm-people are friendly among baskets of the fragrant harvest: apples and pumpkins, ripe candyroasters, peppers, local honey and strings of dried ‘leather-britches’ beans. The farmer’s wife gives me a spoon to taste their best molasses. I savor the sweet amber goodness, craving a pan of hot buttermilk biscuits—the kind my mother’s mother baked in smoky morning shadows beneath big mountains, in an earlier time, on the cold headwaters of the Cane.
*
*
–Quilla
*
Old abandoned cabin along the Cane River, Yancey County NC in late October
*
*
*
*
Three September Poems . . . (and one Haiku thrown in). . .
*
*
*
*
*
*
Feathers
~
This morning I look down:
several wild, blue-grey feathers, fallen
scattered, close together on the ground
. . .
September morning wind
like a wide soft wing, stirs their stillness
slightly, where they lie.
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Goldenrod
~
Now the ragged edges of country roads,
groomed pastures and long-neglected fields
blow wild with intense wonders of pure yellow—
—delighting the descending sun,
the sweet, smoky incense
of warm September afternoons
bending slowly, burning brightly, glowing
softly, the old year’s blooms of Goldenrod .
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Cricket
~
Late, this cool September night—
—windows open, the broken dark world sleeps.
A single cricket beneath the wall, sings
his strident wild mating music reaching, endlessly. . .
Almost as if the earth is not turning at all,
not turning away from the sun again, as if
time’s seeds are not ticking, nor death
nor blue autumn stars, clicking silently
rising again, over the thin bamboo
*
*
*
*
*
(and one extra, that just “arrived” this morning:)
What Happened?
~
A dear old friend
once so close to God,
now she prattles on, and on
about making “six figures”
*
*
*
–Quilla
May 24.13
*
*
*
*
*
The blue-green eggshell of a Thrush
for John Hotchkiss
It is late May, a fine warm windy blue day, the windows are open.
As we pack our dead father’s lifetime into cardboard boxes,
through the open windows I hear the constant click, clicking
of the gardener’s clipping shears, snipping the lush spring growth
from the shrubs beneath the windows, making the house look fresh
again, as it was when mother was alive, as if lived in by the living.
So we close this, their final human chapter, and with reluctance
and a sad relief not unlike late autumn, we put a sign up in the yard.
The three of us who sprang from their loving bodies
will store the heavy boxes of their earthly life in our separate attics, until….
Perhaps a few sepia photos will pose upon the shelves
of our own fleeting years, staring back at us, lost and frozen gazes
collecting careless and impartial dust.
*
The windows are open, letting the spring wind
ruffle through the stale rooms.
Sunny blue breezes jingle the chimes.
A thrush is singing somewhere deep in the trees.
The gardener’s shears keep clipping, clipping.
Sometimes I hear him humming at his work.
I walk outside. Along the shady wooded path I look down
and find the pale, blue-green eggshell of a thrush.
It is the time of year when wild, winged things are born.
We find their empty shells fallen to the forest floor.
*
*
–Quilla
Once, in Maine. . .
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Once, in Maine…
for nls
Three days of cold October rain
blew in from the sea.
I remember white gulls, wheeling
over the windy trees.
That, our fifth autumn together
far from home we made fire,
that antique iron stove,
a four-room rented shack.
We gulped a cheap jug wine at dusk.
Through thin walls we could hear
oceans of windy rain gusting the trees.
Later, under heavy quilts and lantern light
our warm limbs intertwined, hot tongues
and cold claws groped
like lost sea-creatures cast up at night.
How the storm swelled up around
and in us, how it quickly fell away.
What we had, we gave each other,
blew the smoky lantern out.
Later I woke and did not wake you,
walked outside, the cold wet grass.
The storm had passed.
Orion was climbing the wind-stripped oaks.
Standing there in darkness, far from home
in the wake of a big nor’easter
I felt utterly alone.
Next morning, after the rain had done,
after coffee and morning love, the fresh
cool autumn air of Maine,
we walked a quarter mile, between
a hundred years of gray stone walls—
that old wagon road out to the rural route
mailbox, and back. I still can see
your soft brown hair, beguiling eyes.
I don’t recall our words.
The long pile of round rocks in the woods.
The forest bracken gold, the sand and gravel path
—all of it rich with the pungent smell
of storm-blown yellow leaves.
Forty autumns have blown, and fallen.
I think now we knew not where, or even
who we were, just two wandering souls
drawn together, trying to be one.
Within a year, far in the western mountains
our roads would tear apart
like two interwoven souls,
and we would never see each other again.
*
*
–Quilla
Images of Late September
*
*
*
*
*
Beginnings
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Barn door, perspective
*
*
*
*
*
Sunscape on blue waters
*
*
*
*
*
Autumn morning mist, Beaver Lake
*
*
*
*
*
Bicycle shadows
*
*
*
*
*
September morning sun, wild grass
*
*
*
*
*
Butterfly and shadow, stone
*
*
*
*
*
Bottomland farm, goldenrods, morning mist
*
*
*
*
*
Horsebarn windows and stalls
*
*
*
*
*
Dreamscape
*
*
*
*
*
Dead grasses
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Late, in the colorful story of steel. . . . (closeup of a rusted wheel)
*
*
*
*
*
Autumn roses, morning mist
*
*
*
*
Stacked rock wall, spider web
*
*
*
*
*
Begonias in September
*
*
*
*
*
Weeping cedar, hydrangeas, boulder
*
*
*
*
*
Inner depths of brokenness
*
*
*
*
*
Roots and stone
*
*
*
*
“September Mountains”, by Jonas Girard
*
*
*
*
The last word
*
*
*
*
Mid September(revised)
*
*
*
*
*
*
Mid September
The last cut hay of the year
lies yellowing, wide swaths
of dry and golden sun, sweet wisps
on the green September land.
The slightest of breezes rises
in the old oaks, dropping
their yearly burden of acorns, released
to the quiet forest floor.
Birds are silent now.
Anther year, they’ve made their young,
most of them already gone.
Now the fledgling nests of sticks and down
are left to fill with leaves, and snow.
All the sunlit work is done—soft flesh
and hollow bone, the straws of sweetness
—cut and falling, flown away,
swallowed into the dark and hungering
mystery, the coming years.
*
*
*
*
*
*
March Twenty-fifth
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Walking with my mother, late
a Sabbath afternoon, beside
the wide brown river, very near
her childhood home.
It is her eighty-third Spring.
My steps are close beside her, yet
I follow, twenty Springs behind.
The large old maples are greening,
leaning over the rolling water.
We sit and rest, share
the Father’s love, old bits of time—
faces, voices long washed downstream.
In between our caring words and phrases
flow long, listening silences.
Wide awake, we walk a living dream.
Across the strong dark waters, rolling full
of winter, echo the songs of nesting birds.
The sun breaks briefly from a cloud
before it rests in shadow, beyond the hill.
*
*
–Quilla
January Twenty-Fourth
*
*
*
Three Vultures
Sitting in the parking lot
winter evening light
I’m watching three vultures, wheeling
slowly, floating silhouettes
far above a tall black pine.
I walk into the grocery store
and buy some things for supper.
Leaving, at the door I pass by
a woman, once a dear close friend.
Our eyes meet and click, like two shutters.
We almost paused to talk, did not.
That instant, just a second or two
a collage of pictures—years that used to be
rose from the dead,
the fragrance of dead roses.
Our brief greeting, parting glance
said nothing, said everything.
*
*
*
—Quilla
December Nineteenth
Christmas Week
The naked bony hills of morning
are brushed with ice—long strokes in the night
from winter stars, sparkling blue.
I woke before the frozen dawn.
The waning Snow Moon
was walking silently through leafless trees.
Saturn and Spica followed, shy maidens
glimmering thin candles.
Charcoal-colored Juncos have flown down to us
again, from highest summer mountaintops
to spend the winter near our door.
They peck for seeds, the heavy frost.
The seasoned sticks of White Oak snap
and chuckle in the stove, making flames—
long-forgotten suns released.
Our chimney spins long threads of smoke, lost
in the crystal stillness.
They weave away, into the patchwork quilt
of Christmases past.
November Ninth
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
November Moon
Far to the north, my daughter calls me
just after sunset, to share
the risen autumn moon.
Her New England skies, already black
are bristly with stars.
Here, a few long stratus clouds hang low
over the western mountains, burning
coral and smoke, shades of winter love.
In my pale blue east, a nearly full moon
shines white as a tumbled river stone.
It climbs over the woodshed, through bare limbs
into empty sky.
The stream of pure light enters her eyes
and mine, the same instant
a thousand miles apart.
We laugh with each other, recalling
the wonder: a little girl’s skies.
Finally, we say goodnight, and hang up.
Doves have gone silent in the black pines.
The coral clouds have turned to ash.
I go inside, to cook the evening meal.
*
–Quilla
“Be exalted above the heavens, O God;
Let your glory be above all the earth”!
–Psalm 57: vs 11
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
–Quilla
*
*
* * *
Cutting Summer’s First Hay
^
^
^
^
^
^
^
^
^
Cutting the First Hay
Somehow, through the noisy clattering blades—
steel scraping ragged edges of steel, the noxious roar
the tractor motor, its blue fumes
—pierce the sweet lyrics, little wild tunes
of Field Sparrows across the green distances
like lost joy, forever ‘far and wee’. . . .
^
^
^
Recent Haiku:
^
^
^
Up from the warm land
into cool night air—
fireflies!
^
^
^
^
^
^
Summer morning
glistens with night rain
sunlight and yellow finches
^
^
^
^
^
^
My elderly mother
sits at the window, watching
the grey evening sea
^
^
^
^
^
^
Ocean crashing
beyond the open door,
how small our words
^
^
^
^
^
^
How absolute, and brief
one feels, a vast spring morning
standing in the sea
^
^
^
^
^
^
Old sand-dune fences
rusting, singing secrets
the warm sea-oat wind
^
^
^
^
^
^
At last I feel close
to my dead father: riding waves
with his ghost, spring morning sea
^
^
^
^
^
^
Lovely woman at the shore:
bony gawking boys around her,
yearning, yet afraid
^
^
^
^
^
^
Sunset paints the clouds,
the white breasts of the terns,
crests of the long waves
^
^
^
^
^
^
Out of darkness
under cool spring stars:
lines of white foam, ever
^
^
^
^
^
^
^
^
^
^
^
^
March Haiku
Haiku is an ancient Japanese poetic form, usually 3 lines, approx. 17 syllables. In their brevity, haiku captures the essence of moments, insights, feelings, impressions. Traditionally, haiku are sensitive to the beauties of the passing seasons, and man’s relationship to the natural world. Since many of us have lost touch with these values, haiku is a gentle but potent means of reconnecting with the wild, created universe. The art form is now practiced by millions in a wide variety of countries and languages, with a multitude of haiku societies, periodicals, etc.
Basho, the most prominent haiku master, from several hundred years ago, said: “Haiku is simply what is happening in this place, at this moment”.
–that’s a good place to begin, and to remain, while exploring the many internal and external possibilities that haiku offer. It’s a wonderful way of seeing, ‘capturing’ and expressing poignant moments in our lives -Quilla
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
(from a weekend in Blowing Rock/Boone)
*
I left my camera
at home. Oh, how many
photographs I see!
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Sick in my gut
sick in my heart, indoors
watching the Spring snow
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Two wild geese
on the boathouse roof
softly falling snow
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Large lake lost in fog:
a snowy path, criss-crossed
with sparrow tracks
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Solitary crow
flies off. Snow drops–
the quivering branch
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Old willows, greening
tender limbs cascading
silent spring snowfall
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Snow falling off
tree limbs, into dark water
interlocking rings
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Thick snowy fog
invisible lake, unseen
wild geese honking past
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Old willows, new leaves
soft Spring snow. Bamboo flute
breathing deep within
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Students walk beneath
these old maples where I walked
forty Springs ago
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Snow-bent daffodils
I get down on my knees
hold them in my hands
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
from NC Arboretum forest, 3.29:
*
Mountain waters
echo ancient streams
flowing through the mind
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Along the quiet trails
people come and go.
Flowers bloom, wind blows
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
3.31
Gray spring river
flows beneath empty gray trees
under gray snow sky
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Meditation on a Winter Night
^
^
Meditation on a Winter Night
Deep in winter night, crystals of snow
come spinning down the misted glow
of thin porchlight.
A chunk of Appalachian coal
long-sleeping in the earth, a cold black stone
two million winters, wakens tonight—
primordial sunlight flickers down
tall forest leaves and marshy ferns,
lost solar flames
burn and flutter in the stove.
The lamplit shelf beside my rows of books
a gnarl of driftwood sits, beached now
high above the crest of tides.
An ocean shell is curled here, quiet.
A forest deer’s bleached thigh-bone rests,
she leaps no more through summer ferns.
A tumbled grey-green creek-stone, gives
the giving light in my daughter’s eyes.
Meandered years these separate things
found me, each in its turn, I brought them home
and placed them here—a wandered cairn
to mark my way.
^
This trail is graced with whole and broken shells
that wake sometimes, wail in the night.
The path is crusted highland crags of rime
and washed sometimes with holy streams,
their warm green stones of love, cast up.
God’s wild and beautiful animals freely graze in me.
They wander the starlight of my mind,
hide in the thickets of these bones.
^
^
—Quilla
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.
^
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.
^
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.
^ ^ ^
Looking Forward, Looking Back
From this high and bright October ridge of rock, of windblown meadow grass—
looking far below, to the darkened east there glows a rainbow’s edge, its soft arc
glistens through the half-dressed scarecrows of fading trees.
^
Even as we watch, layers of far blue mountains fade and fade, into the deeper shades
of indigo, distance and mist, the coming night, the approach of grim November.
^
Each autumn, we must mingle what remains: the stained glass fragments of hope
and love—still shining in the dark sanctuary of our childlike hearts—with everything
our eyes, our hands, our minds remember.
* * *
Ruach 333, by Quilla 