Beneath this Glory: a new poem from THE CHANCE OF HOME

Beneath this Glory

A delight to my eyes are glowing and pleasant colors. They touch me, wide awake, the day, nor do they give me a moment’s respite in the way the voices of singers, sometimes the entire choir, keep silence.

                        —Augustine of Hippo

Again the colors begin their blaze, veiled

all summer under a broad canopy of green,

their bold reds and oranges and golds

flaming the blue harvest sky. Beneath this

glory I find my way home at last, the winds

beginning to unburden the trees of their

thousand shimmering wicks that burn one

last time before winter finally will come,

ushering in a cold that stings flesh grown

lazy under the charm of this September sun.

Soon enough these trees will stand as bony

skeletons once more, their afternoon shadows

reaching out with long entangled fingers

across the yard, their season’s dress falling

to be raked into mounds and burned, only to

rise again in a plume of sweet smoke and ash.

Wandering out under their uplifted arms,

I sense something of a movement that carries

all of this, with us, unceasingly, each shining

moment caught in an endless drift of time,

now briefly here but soon to be finished and

gone, awaiting the rise of the coming year.