Tag: mortality

Seasonal Love Song

Late Summer's Sun

Late summer's sun has baked the grass to brown.
The days grow shorter with each passing day, 
Soon, autumn's chill will make the leaves fall down.
All of this aching beauty will decay.

And yet I love the shadow's slanting trace.
The once green grain gone golden in its rows.
And how I love the lines etched in your face.
It's funny, as love ripens how it grows.

The number of our days we do not know.
No sleeper knows if he will ever wake.
So come, let's join above, between, below.
My dear, let's cause our fragile clay to quake.
Let us make love as if it's our last go.
Let us embrace like dawn will never break.

Living in Florida has discombobulated my internal calendar. With none of the old familiar clues, autumn snuck up on me this year. I’ve resorted to flipping through old photos to get a sense of what fall feels like. Here’s a little sonnet from 2015 written when I was spending a lot of time away from home for work, and obviously missing my wife.

P.S.: Psychology Today says that our master circadian clock — the one that keeps track of the seasons is called the Suprachiasmatic Nucleus, which contains about 20,000 nerve cells and is located in the hypothalamus. Gonna have to take their word for it.

Late summer sonnet

The once green grain gone golden in its rows
Late Summer’s Sun

Late summer’s sun has baked the grass to brown.
The days grow shorter with each passing day,
Soon, autumn’s chill will make the leaves fall down.
All of this aching beauty will decay.

And yet I love the shadows’ slanting trace,
The once green grain gone golden in its rows,
And how I love the lines etched in your face.
It’s funny, as love ripens how it grows.

The number of our days we do not know.
No sleeper knows if he will ever wake.
So come, let’s join above, between, below.
My dear, let’s cause our fragile clay to quake.
Let us make love as if it’s our last go.
Let us embrace like dawn will never break.

Notes:

It’s that time again to haul this old one out of the vault.

Among other things, God was the first poet.  The world is full of rhyme and rhythm, image and metaphor.

In our own small, imperfect way, we just catch glimpses.

 

Haiku for my father

Well over sixty, Dad built a barn by himself ...
Well over sixty,
Dad built a barn by himself.
Now it, too, molders.

Old San Juan Haiku

Statue outside of Ponce de Leon's home in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Ponce de Leon
searched for the fountain of youth.
He now, too, is dead.