The Harmonics of Fall

Athens, Georgia

December 29, 2014

When social loops resonate 

to unholy harmonics in a world 

wired close and wound tight; 

when the soundtrack of triumph 

sweeps your people, and sweet 

ideals are wielded as weapons; 

when the grievance is just 

too great to ignore and your mind 

is gripped in anger: go. 

Go into an autumn afternoon 

where out of stillness, peace 

descends on dry leaf flurries, 

where a thousand blackbirds 

speak in tongues of tiny angels 

timeless blessings to life,

where echoes of ageless minds 

penetrate prepackaged lives, 

and strife recedes to hush. 

When impelled by honor to act: 

engage, but withhold your soul, 

for you are more than your role. 

You have felt the autumn breeze. 

You've sensed the inner harmony. 
You have been blessed by birds.

"Leaves and Light,"
photograph by David Noah, Winterville, Georgia

Waiting for Dawn and the Sunday Times

Athens, Georgia

November 23, 2014

My kitchen is so cold I crack 
the oven inches open, set 
the knob to rod-glows-red,

and hug my hot water bottle. 

Predawn drips darkness 

as I watch the eternal sunrise 

sweep across the Atlantic 

on my world daylight app.

Silhouettes emerge outside 

when the great arc of light 

with an apex above Iceland 

kisses the shores of Georgia. 

It is midday in Spain 

and sunset in Sri Lanka,

afternoon in Abu Dhabi,

midnight in Sydney.

China lies in darkness 

while Auckland inhabits 

tomorrow. We share 

the same moment, I muse 

while watching out for all 

the news that’s fit to print 

to hit my driveway double 

wrapped against the drizzle.

I scroll the social media 

past the cats and dinner pics, 

by the snark and sentiment, 

around the pronouncements 

and dodgy links, to plunge 

through a blog on Buddhism 

tagged with a holy aspiration: 

“Have light, will travel.” 

How nice, if only, I mutter, 

startled by the gray-brown 

world, bathed in soft dawn 

as if from within. I check 

my app and sure enough, 

it’s right on time. Light 

comes as new days must, 
to all who sit and wait.

The Ache at the Edge of Autumn

Athens, Georgia

An Autumn Road in the Botanical Garden,
photograph by Don Hunter

November 15, 2014; revised August 22, 2015

Heaven drifts in on an autumn day 

when dry leaves filter long moments 

and the very air is your lover 

when boundaries collapse and being extends 

until all is kindness, dappled 

in afternoon light.

You inhabit a living songscape

and hear the choir of the wood cricket 

humming an ode to existence itself.

A fresh wind renews the sky. 

The river course restores its water. 

A romp of otters slips upstream. 

The whole of life has brought you here — 

time, fulfilled in a moment of joy. 

Consummation always comes 

and afternoon forever fades. 

There is an ache at the edge of an autumn day

when time trends toward waning 

and earth spins ever away.

There is an ache an octave above pain 

a register beyond joy 

built in the core of creation 

forged in the fire of the long-ago making 

when the great winding down began. 

There is an ache impressed on the cosmic tapestry 

through the ever expanding void. 

I am is its cry, ever fading.

There's an urge to return that is etched on us all 

but home is a haven gracing the past.
Do you feel the ache inside your soul? 

It burns but does not consume.
Heaven is somewhere adjacent to here. 

Eternity dances the edges of fall. 

Map of Cosmic Background Radiation

The View from Grandma's Kitchen

Athens, Georgia

October 22, 2014

Day after faithful day 

Grandmother Gilmore rose before dawn 

in a tiny log home, carved into Carolina woods.

Grandpa sleeps 

as she tiptoes to 

her snug kitchen, warm as a womb 

standing by the iron-stained sink 

looking out 

on a weathered well-house 

hard by the side yard oak 

hemmed in by hickory 

flanked by the forest 

in darkness beyond. 

Night softens, coffee perks and oats congeal 

as she stirs and hums her Gospel songs - 

Maxwell House 

Quaker Oats 

and Precious Lord would see her through. 

Did she dream of their life in the city again? 

She lived high on the hog 

for a Hickerson girl 

till God laughed and times turned - 

the good life got away again.

With Peace in the Valley 

the black night recedes 

through shadows and gray 

to one more day much like the last. 

The mama cat 

would be hungry again 

so she scrapes a plate of table scraps 

to place beside the back porch step 

with a dish of milk 

for the kittens to lap.

She butters another pan biscuit 

for the faraway grandchild hovering 

by the kitchen table 

carried aloft 

on comic book dreams. She pours his juice 

in a jelly jar as he bides his time 

to warmth of day 

to find his own way 

through the woods and the fields 

through the toils and the snares 

till he no longer hears 

her own voice in his mind.

But memory bears her blessed assurance 

from over the Jordan in Beulah Land. 

So I rise in the darkness 

a half century on, still humming 

her early morning song, still dreaming 

my way through the vastness beyond 

but perking and stirring a day like the last. 

Here is a link to "Grandpa Gilmore Left Me a Poem"

Jean Hickerson Gilmore and her daughter, Ruth

Weeds Have Names

Athens, Georgia

September 24, 2014; revised August 29, 2019

With thanks to the Nature Ramblers, led by Dale Hoyt and Linda Chafin, (and Hugh Nourse, who has moved to St. Louis) with Don Hunter, photographer. Some of Don's images from September 18 are reproduced below. No botanicals were harmed in the production of this poem.

Weeds have names we never know: 

the world is filled with hidden souls.

I walk down moist paths 

in the abundance of summer 

through dew drops and deer ticks 

to hang on new words, happy 

as a puppy with a play-toy. A boy 

exploring the borders of Eden 

would sense the names assigned 

by Adam, though science prefers 

the precision of Latin – verbesina alternifolia 

is an asteraceae of order asterales, 

featuring a flower in the form of capitula, 

surrounded by involucral bracts. 

Weeds have names we’ll never know, 

but ‘wingstem' sticks to unschooled minds 

and ‘dog fennel’ channels bliss, 

the smell of boyhood forts in fields. 

Glory is goldenrod and crownbeard 

when old fields glow yellow  

against blue-purple tips of towering ironweed 

and lavender balls of tall thistle. 

Peace comes to the cusp of fall 

on white waves of frostweed 

and ivory boneset, in pokeweed 

and patches of rabbit tobacco. 

By the margins of forest, beautyberry 

thrive and grape ferns unfurl

their sensitive fronds. The world 

bursts with hidden soul 

and my back yard goes ragged.

Elephant foot in exuberance 

grows ungainly shoots 

branching through odd angles 

to tiny flowers, which lend 

the lawn a purple hue. Weeds 

have names we cannot know 

expressed in scent and pollen. 

Bumblebees consume their sweetness.

Fritillaries share their bodies. 

They toil and spin their secret 

lives, they reproduce, and soon 

they die. We barely sense a hidden 

soul, clothed in rude glory 

exceeding kingly robe and throne.

They make on life a modest claim, 

but each one bears its own true name 

known to God and them alone.

More poems of August:

Coming Home

Jurassic Dreams and Katydids

Awaiting Passage into Fall

Frostweed (by Don Hunter)

Boneset (by Don Hunter)

Boneset and Camphor (by Don Hunter)

Thistle Flower (by Don Hunter)

Golden Aster (by Don Hunter)

Elephant's Foot (by Don Hunter)

Beautyberry
(by Bob Ambrose)

Watching After August Rains

Athens, Georgia

August 28, 2014

Come the season of crow and cicada

in the stasis of late summer

when old dogs and aging men

laze about their porches, waiting

perhaps to watch a raucous squad

maneuver through the understory

working the wide angles

ever closer, closing in

to stage a raid on take home tins

containing bits of doggie kibble

left from last night’s feeding.

Let them have it all, I whisper

staring down long moments

on a languid frame of fur and bones

to spot a shallow tell-tale breath.

Sleep, not death, not yet not yet.

Good ‘ole Bowser, last of litter

just another Georgia black dog

brought in from the woods.

Seen fifteen summers, asks so little –

tummy rubs and idle scritches,

snuffle walks around the back,

some kitchen scraps atop his kibble.

Let black birds have what he won’t eat.

We grow complacent waiting, waiting.

Far away the world lurches,

the young return to learning,

the busy go their scripted way.

You who strive and chase the wind

bursting with certain conviction,

would you pause and sit a while

to watch an August day with me?

For I have seen sixty five summers

that once seemed centuries

in a lifetime of forever

but from the distance of back decks

the days may drag

but years by God

are short. They lead

to spent seasons

tired dogs, and yearnings

which have no name

borne on a fresh westerly
clearing out the August rain.

Good ole' Bowser

Cloud Play in White on Blue

Bald Head Island, North Carolina

July 23, 2014; revised August 15, 2014

A worthy vocation, this:

to wake up and watch

white cumulus

expand into cerulean;

to hear the whisper

of palm fronds

rasp secrets of the sea breeze;

to look out and see

white ibis

scour the shade of cedar trees;

to let go and glide

the summer mind

and sense the impassive watcher smile;

to trace the fate

of clouds in skies

and grasp the end of mortal lives –

we all resolve in blue.

"Watson Mill Skyscape," by David Noah,
Winterville, Georgia

Summer Lakeside Grace

In dreams of yesterday - from boyhood in Jacksonville, Florida

Athens, Georgia

July 24, 2014

There were high summer Sundays

so blessed, instead of church

we’d head for Starke.

Unshackled from Seersucker,

kicking off shoes

for swim suits and flip flops

and freedom to breathe,

we packed the family wagon

squirming in the back seat.

While Mom passed out peppermint,

Dad steered us south

to ski the day at Kingsley Lake.

Four brown and freckled

stairstep children carve

the crystal surface to exhaustion

then snorkel the shallows

floating a dreamscape

like airships over fairy towns

with towers of algae and silverside

minnows by forests of lake grass

and plains of fine sand.

Perfect days wane

as we ride home with Ray Charles

crackling on the car radio  –

Sing the song, children.

A half century softens

when his chorus confirms

I can’t stop loving you

and I live again in memory

of a lonesome time

sensing the shadow

of an awful obligation –

growing up means going on.

Halfway home we stop once more

by the random roadside stand

to choose a ripe melon

forged of water and sun

much like our happy lives,

for even now I close my eyes

and taste it yet –

the sweetness of late youth,

yielding.

To Probe the Impenetrable

Athens, Georgia

July 13, 2014

“Behind it all is surely an idea so simple, so beautiful, that when we grasp it - in a decade, a century, or a millennium - we will all say to each other, how could it have been otherwise?”  

“In any field, find the strangest thing and explore it.”  

- John Archibald Wheeler

Pierce the veil and plunge 

beneath the scale of seeing. 

Probe impenetrable horizons 

and peer at the echo of origins. 

Corral the ghost that animates 

the spell of elegance that looks 

on all as made of strings, looped 

and coiled on 9-D branes, 

excited to the higher harmonics 

in a manifold landscape of quark 

and gluon, EM waves, and fields 

that warp space…

He has shown thee, O man, just 

what is good and what required. 

                          … Oh do not 

feign a humble pose. We stole 

the fruit, now find the cipher 

and call ourselves clever. If all

arose from empty void and we 

the fragile wisp of naught  

evolved to render the real; if 

awareness dances with truth — 

then let us feast on forbidden 

fruit and live forever, serenaded 

by a spare tune, not quite harsh,
played dolce on the cosmic harp.

A Prayer of June in Green and Brown

Athens, Georgia

June 18, 2014

To be present at creation

and wander deep time

weightless as the moment itself,

for eternity is an inbreath

of early June evening,

when life hums a low note

and late sun filters softness

through darkening shade;

or the pool of morning,

when buzz-trill and chirp-call

weave the tree tops, waking

whole days; or in the still-breath,

when slant yellow renders

shades of green to veins of gold

and the nervous house wren

pauses on a porch rail

regarding options.

He fans a tiny wing,

darts eyes, twitches

twice, flies. Action

breaks the idle spell, restores

the world to green and brown.

I do not trust a golden throne

guarded by pearl encrusted

gates. Just give me Now

in my outbreath and God

in the garden, trailing

dew beads to a new solstice.

"Primitive Dawn," by David Noah, Winterville, Georgia