Autumn, two poems.

I had the pleasure of a holiday spent visiting good friends out East this month in Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey. It was such a good, needed time of renewing and strengthening old friendships, reflecting on new relationships in my life, and pure recreation. One of my favorite afternoons was spent apple picking with two old roommates, Carolyn and Ashley. Here's a poem from that experience.


Notes on an Apple Harvest
I taste fall in the Berkshires,
in a crimson-tipped valley
where an orchard drops its fruit.

Braeburns, like dusky plums,
burden thick old limbs,
and fallen Winesaps
press the ground, they
bruise it soft and red.

I favor the Macoun,
its sheath of skin
snaps and juice puddles
cold like spring rains.
Autumn lets loose
the quick, sweet
flavor of season's change.

And here's a poem by May Sarton that I dedicate to dear Sarah in New York. The "you," as I interpret, is open-ended and can be an ideology, a person, an experience... Thank you, Sarah, for being with me as I "lose what I lose to keep what I can keep."

Autumn Sonnet
If I can let you go as trees let go
Their leaves, so casually, one by one;
If I can come to know what they do know,
That fall is the release, the consummation,
Then fear of time and the uncertain fruit
Would not distemper the great lucid skies
This strangest autumn, mellow and acute.
If I can take the dark with open eyes
And call it seasonal, not harsh or strange
(for love itself may need a time of sleep)
And, treelike, stand unmoved before the change,
Lose what I lose to keep what I can keep,
The strong root still alive under the snow,
Love will endure – if I can let you go.