Happy Equinox!

Autumn Harvest ~ Gary Gay
A couple of poems from Mary Oliver to celebrate the Equinox!
Fall Song
Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,
the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadows, unmattering back
from the particular island
of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere
except underfoot, moldering
in that black subterranean castle
of unobservable mysteries – roots and sealed seeds
and the wanderings of water. This
I try to remember when time’s measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn
flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay – how everything lives, shifting
from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.
~ Mary Oliver
Spring
Somewhere a black bear
has just risen from sleep
and is staring down the mountain.
All night in the brisk and shallow restlessness of early spring
I think of her, her four black fists flicking the gravel, her tongue
like a red fire touching the grass, the cold water. There is only one question:
how to love this world. I think of her rising like a black and leafy ledge
to sharpen her claws against the silence of the trees. Whatever else
my life is with its poems and its music and its glass cities,
it is also this dazzling darkness coming down the mountain,
breathing and tasting; all day I think of her –
her white teeth, her wordlessness, her perfect love.
~ Mary Oliver
5 Responses to “Happy Equinox!”
Tender is the LIGHT!
(Maybe only in September).
Before the falling night
to thank IT we remember.
Loved reading this poem.Thank you
Bellissime poesie, entrambe.
Beautiful poems, both.
Form Italy, F. C.
There is only one question: how to love this world.
I love Mary Oliver’s poetry. Happy Equinox .
I’m melting. But Mary does that to me…
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