As imperceptible as Grief
The Summer lapsed away

- Emily Dickenson

***

Blackberry-Picking

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: sumer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. The red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk-cans, pea-tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.

- Seamus Heaney (verse 1)

***

haiku: autumn trees

depth of autumn
a few leaves on the tree
dancing

autumn leaves
the girls talk about
christmas

autumn
from the gnarled trees
fluttering birds


- John tiong chunghoo

***

If You Forget Me by Pablo Neruda

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash....



***


Nameless


Indian summer's longdrawn thread
all white in the earliest hours of day
unravelled from summer's dangling hem
draws us to dream and meditate

In those smoky-yellow moments
when summer deceives us one last time
we thread a needle with the silence
the needle with a broken eye

- Jan Skacel

The Seven Deadly Sins (IV)

My Neighbour’s Pears


I’m looking at green
blossoming down one side
of his mouldy
black-fingered tree
thinking
that those softly-rouged bottoms
have no right to be
so perfectly pear-shaped.

I'm looking for an axe
of a north wind to blow,
or a deftly-looped rope
to pull, to pin me
under those sugared skins
tumbling
like dulcimer hammers

Onto my side of the fence.

Ah, listen -
there’s his young wife
singing.




ms2006