I want to write about the fall’s last rose bud
now blooming among hips
red and glistening with rain.
I long to tell you how the blossom’s
unexpected beauty transformed my day
how its scent reminded me of Grandma Gracie
with her hard tales of Montana told
over cups of weak coffee.
She’s long dead like Shakespeare.
Without him or his gang of literary geniuses
I could get away with it
but they would name me claim jumper
or hack
just for writing about a late blooming rose.
Pre-schoolers can squeal in the face of a wind
that delivers a fierce rain
to fog my glasses
strip coloring leaves from trees
and cleanse away summer’s buildup of decay.
Gone soon the rotting salmon
washed away with
the tasty trout
now forced by flood water to retreat from the spawning grounds
to deep water lakes
surviving on little
but the promise of a rich spring.
Our fall table will groan with plenty
so will the one set in winter when snow and ice
open up ground for those willing to lean
into a stiff northern wind.
Do all children carry magic lights
revealing the beauty
hidden by everyday life?
Today mine casually points
to beach rocks passed over hundreds of times
speaks and I see
light transforming common into something
worthy of a museum.
The sun opens this September morning planting a chaste kiss on Mt. Juneau
but leaves the town wrapped in a protective wrap of gray
cut off from the orgy of light we need after a week of wet and wind
until the north wind lays us bare under the deep blue sky
we despaired of every seeing again before the Taku winter winds blow.
Looking at this pile of grounded leaves
I wonder why a bear would shake
a fruitless tree
Yesterday its cloak
purple red and orange
offered the only brightness
in a day of gray
Today just a threadbare chasuble
covers its bones
Did he climb it for safety
or jostle just to stand tall
through a colorful shower of leaves?
You never know with bears.
I welcome this first yellow leaf
breaking summer’s monopoly of green
until it drops at my feet, stressed to
yellow brown by predation and poor
growing conditions, the first to fall
from a weaken tree
When reflecting grey morning light our bathroom mirror can transform silver to blond, wrinkled to smooth. Then I see the man I know my self to be not the one seen by the world. He appears when someone turns on the light.
Tonight the spruce reach up and tear the clouds
until their fragments rise
as smoke from a doused fire
as a gray peace settles over those I love
and those I don’t.
In these minutes between rain
and wind
and the easy sunshine
someone should bundle up our troubles
and toss them onto the deck of an ocean going boat
like that gill netter moving up channel.
They could do it from the Douglas Island Bridge
before the wind reunites the broken clouds
and rain.
Would Andrew Wyeth have snapped this picture from the seat of his touring bicycle? This image of this woman with hair the color of the arctic cotton she gathers as muskeg water soaks her shoes? At this distance he would be able to impose his idea of beauty on her face and form. I couldn’t get the colors right but do see her passion. We would both crown her queen of wild cotton.
Half naked
a man carries his small dog
to the middle of a field of
impossibly green grass
then bursts forward at speed
the dog hard on his heal.
After winning the race
he rolls over for a reward
as I pluck mine
these succulent
wild raspberries
that burst in my mouth.
Walking with Aki 