Fall into Night
Having slept late,
Perforce,
To my condition
It’s too soon
Now, the three-o’clock
Time when
The day turns
As it must
Toward autumnal
Night
And we notice,
If subcutaneous,
The knowing
Sense of
This;
Inside autumn leaves
We face
Alternatives:
To go dry-wilting
Into brown days
Or to
Flame like novae
In glory of
Expiring red,
Yellow tears or
Tears,*
Last bright orange
Bleeding
Dwindling into
Joyful or stressed
Evenings
Of our
Distinctive seasons
*reader’s choice
Weathering
Storms, fire
Firestorms
That’s in California
Floods, tornadoes
Water-sheets
And other means
Of rain to strike
At us
Texas and in Florida
Where sand is
Bagged by convict
Volunteers—on
North through
Eastern USA
River-rise in Paris
Art treasures
Moved toward
More-protected
Ground
Certain seasons
Start all over (as
In again and
Everywhere)
In nature’s timing
And all storms’
Discretion
Selfishly, I am
Well above brick
Walkways and
Macadam streets
I have electric
In safe measure—
Mostly, though
Not always:
A tree smashed
Into the house
Not so long ago
A favorite book,
The Mighty Acts
Of God, a
Faithful book
Nature is God’s,
And the Christian
Claim is God is
Love
So what is the
Love here? It
Id that God loves
Us and leaves
Us the means—even
In, and as, a fallen
World
Our part to start
Redress is to resolve
To do so
That’s it: resolve
(The rest follows)
Seasonings
Winter was hard
Not because I was cold
But impoverished in
Other ways
The white was too much
Too tall, too unusual
For me, anymore
I live in the southern part,
Now, of the state
(Okay, a northern state)
And don’t expect such
Walled-off weather
Often, if at all
It was anxiety; I took
A pill, and pretended
That would be enough
Now spring is here
I wonder which came first:
The verb or the season’s
Name
I could look it up
But I’m not sure that
Would tell me
Ancient stories, after
All, have variants
Winter and summer
Are, as coined by my folk-
Literature teacher,
Hilda Kring—they are
Characternyms
We know what they
Are because value
And form make sound
Thar tell us
But the other two,
Spring and fall, might be
Named for what they
Do—or what we do is named
For what they’ve done,
First and longer
We’ll, I’ll spring
Then you and I, we’ll
Summer (because
We know what
That means), and then
Let’s drop like leaves
Of fall, onto an Earth
Softened by snow
And ice, dew and rain,
And the gentle
Wearying
Of all other
Seasons
(Hilda Kring was a professor of
folklore and folk-literature at
my college, while I was a student
there; she made the term
“characternym” for names of
characters who sounded like what,
in depiction, they were, such
as Uriah Heep in David Copperfield
–and maybe Copperfield
himself; she requested someone
to publish this term for her and to
her credit–and here is my try,
“characternym” from Doctor Hilda Kring)
Equinoxing
It’s so weird
Weirding
To watch the sun pass over
In front of the house
On its way west
So early in the day
But that’s how it is
This side of the planet
With the way we keep
Time and the pereceptions
Realized this way
What if we measured differently
What if we went by lunar time
As many do
Or simply measured seasons
As they felt
Would this day seem so strange
Knowing, as it is, that by three
This afternoon, it will look like
Early evening
Without standard time and
Saving time without the skill
To measure nanoseconds
Would passing moments feel
Differently feel righter
As we might know the
Passing and the tilting
Of our earth
clcouch123 
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