Awaiting Passage into Fall

Athens, Georgia

May 28, 2014

An earlier version of this poem was posted in May 2011.

When a Southern August lays on hands with lush embrace

of steamy weeks

in sticky haze

then come the ghosts of Carboniferous swamps

to cast their ancient spells,

I hear their call:

"Jurassic Landscape" by Karen Carr.
© Karen Carr/Australian Museum

        Devolve, devour

        Gondwana’s store

        return onto

        Pangean shores

        release your old

        reptilian core

        to bask the vast

        unending light

        through countless days

        of mindless sigh

        and dwell here

        past eternity –

        it’s long before the Fall.

Through waning days I run the break of dark

by tidy lawns refreshed

with dew.

Their scent and sparkle stir anew

as memories reconstitute old seasons born so long ago

in stain and sweat

and school boy pride

forged from summer football trials in heat and pads

on high school fields

that to young minds must surely yield triumphant

Friday nights to come

if only

August days would end

at last in break of fall.

Those Southern rites of passage echo yet

in aching muscles

one time strong.

They burn inside my aging body decades on

as by degrees the morning dark

seeps into day

and evening light just melts away

in endless August once again when weeks pile up

and I await

the break of heat that snaps the spell

as age and darkness creep, encroach

and claim their share of fading light

for longer nights of fall.

Yet far too soon I’ll take those final steps

through shadowlands

to peaceful shores

bedeviled by ideals undone

but singing Eden’s call:

        Evolve, create

        new worlds today

        and make of earth

        a paradise

        beyond the snare

        of ancient spell

        that weaves the hell

        of human strife

        into the dreams of Fall.

Creature of primeval slough with singing blood

and scheming mind

in fear and fight, in pride of life

I wait

and cling to hope inside –

may grace embrace the fall.

Earth in late Carboniferous Period
(from Wikipedia, by Dr. Ron Blakely)

A Way in the Wilderness

Lake Louise, Alberta*

Ice encrusts your goggles at twenty five below.

Paths are sealed in darkness, Lord!

There’s no clear way to go.

And winter trails dim well too fast 

as eventide folds into night

with stars alone providing light.

The world recedes as ways fall dark 

and beauty drains from mortal sight, 

a silent prison sealed in white.

While woods are lovely, dark and deep

when viewed from lodge or well-groomed path,

sometime in life will come a test

when woods turn into wilderness,

when dark and deep oppress the soul,

when lovely turns to creeping cold.

Your mind harks back to life before

spent safe beside the hearthstone fire, 

which burns and brightens even now 

in warmth the lodge at Lake Louise.

You pause in awe of open sky

where holy visions crystallize, 

as early evening stars appear

with undreamed wonders pressing near, 

beyond all words but strangely clear

when set in stillness white on white

so far from lodge at Lake Louise.

But ice encrusts your goggles,

it seeps inside your soul, 

and time compresses tightly

to frozen snowy hell

its icy heart, indifferent

to choices and their toll.

So brave the cold,

embrace the pain

then take a step, 

and step again.

Led by the arms of God to life

or to the arms of God to lie

matters not in wilderness –

resolve sustains beyond despair 

if inner stillness shares the grace

of snow white peaks seen in the face

and placid depths of Lake Louise.

*This poem is condensed from “A Way Out of Wilderness,” a poetic account of Susan Richardson's cross-country trek while attending a professional workshop, December 2007.  Susan looks back on the ordeal remembering the combination of hope and joy expressed in the final lines of that poem, "[I'll] count myself the grateful lost / pursuing traces etched in white, / and reach that pathway’s end in time / forevermore the grateful found."