Author: Kay Foley

Something gnaws at me, but what?
Another gorgeous morning
in my favorite month
of my best-loved season
of this worthy year.
What oh what could possibly bother?
I hope for an antidote somewhere 
out in the beautiful world.

New path in the woods
leads to fresh delights.
The old one has eroded and
is now a deep trench.  Logs and
branches strewn across to
send us off elsewhere.
My brain becomes rutted too 
with old worn trenches.
The same angry reactions. 
That over-rehearsed scene.
Trails of thought running in loops.
We can cut new paths in our brains,
they say, leading to edges of new thought
unknown hidden vistas
territories verdant and fresh
waterfalls of understanding
valleys of contentment.
Does it not seem foolish to
follow the old roads when 
we do not even like the endpoint?

The big wide woods I once explored with another dog are yellow now.
The maple groves, the pawpaws, the redbuds yellow, bright and cheerful.  
Making sun where there is none with their dying leaves.
Those leaves have only six months at most to live.
And I fortunate I watch generations of them come and go.
Once when I was little I gathered fallen leaves into boxes
dragged to the basement for warmth through the winter.
Now I am content with the cycle of life even my own.
Easy to say now, all hale and hearty.  But now is all I know.
Who and what I become later remain a mystery.
I might not be a model of equanimity then.
But I might.

I would like to thank someone (God?  I think yes)
for this early fall, this long string of glorious autumn days
crisp and bright as any apple you could eat just off the tree
or slice up and bake in a pie with sugar and cinnamon. 
And I would like to thank whomever asked the question
Who could eat this day and not be full?
for surely that sums All up so very tartly
this day and the one before it and the one
before that and so on and so forth which
put together have made not one but two at least 
pies filled with days that you could eat with a fork.
Or even with the ten fingers of your two hands.
So here and now I say Thank you, God.
And thank you, Anonymous Poet.

Reluctant to make 
another mistake of the heart 
I pour my love upon
leaf and stem
sun and moon
tree and creek
and all my many Others
(including dogs).
Love is not only what
all the songs say.
 

Tumble and bumble 
jumble dee doo
I saw a frog
with only one shoe.
 
Believe me or leave me
my wickedest friend
I see a sky that’s
blue without end.
 
Rambling and clambering
in the gnarly old woods
I’ll show you birds
in jackets with hoods.
 
And evermore forevermore
the leaves will keep falling
and I’ll go out walking
while your name I’m calling.

I took ninety-seven photos in the woods today
believing I might somehow capture what delights me.
Morning sun casting a spotlight on a stem of leaves.
Fat drops of dew hanging on.
River oats now brown symmetrical windblown.
Red vine making its way through the green.
Creek reflecting the colors on the bluff.
Pawpaws paling, great long leaves umbrellad over my head.
But my photos do not enchant like their subjects do.  
They disappoint me after all.
Too much is lost in my simple camera
and that is quite all right as I do have
these two legs to get me back
and these two eyes to feast upon All.

A single yellow leaf lets go the redbud branch
where it was born and has lived happily 
(I can only assume) since May.
Now tumbling loose and languorous 
touching as it falls this branch that leaf
a few of the neighbors it has only ever 
waved at from above.  Until this very day.
What happens next is an unknown
involving the eventual slow return to
another form, a new richness.

 

This still morning fits my mood as
my life feels paused somehow placed on hold
not by the finger of God or any angel good or evil
but by my own reluctance to change 
one whit
of what
has felt to me a perfect balance.
The petals of this flower have 
uncurled to a round fullness
drinking up the sun and rain
finding this patch of earth 
so loamy and rich as to promise 
ever more and grander
blooms to come.

Fields of browned corn stalks rustle (I imagine) as I speed by in my car.
Sunflowers crowd along these country roadsides as if watching
some kind of parade: me going by in my car.  A very short parade.
Bean fields yellow too and pale green, the beans long ago picked
and simmered in a pot with a piece of bacon, onion, salt and pepper.
It is early fall and some One must have decided long ago 
that a palette of yellow green and brown would be just the thing
on this Nebraska landscape in late September.
Against a brilliant blue sky contentment has picked up its brush.