Autumnal Confusion

The days grow ever shorter,

Darkened skies awake a brilliant red.

Trees display their grandest colors,

As one by one each leaf falls dead.

The sunny days turn colder

Rivers swell with increased rain,

The silence in the air at night,

Seems to beckon snow again.

I miss the grazing butterflies,

The hummingbirds that flit around,

The blossoms where the garden stood,

Now bare and frozen ground.

Changes bring on melancholy

Yet my favorite season is the Fall…

My heart it seems, is pulled two ways,

I hate Autumn most of all.

Bibles or Bottles

I graduated high school,

Hitting the highway at full throttle,

Landing on a Dakota Prairie,

Where living was the Bible or the bottle.

Cub Scouts burnt the wild hemp fields,

Earning patches and a troop Award…

Meanwhile fat girls in black framed glasses,

Ratted their hair and served the lord.

Harboring rebellious dreams;

My mind set in Kerouac mode…

I traded the Baptists for Bourbon,

Waved off Jesus and hit the road.

Enter the Dragon

Today I entered the vortex,

Where all the earth’s rivers end.

I floated away in the ether,

Awakening in my body again.

E. B. White said to “Wind the clock”,

I did, letting hope transcend.

The house now is too big for me,

The orchard more than I can tend.

The maintenance more expensive,

Than checks I can write and send.

My youth, an obsolete calendar,

The clock has no time to lend.

Enticed by Chinese artifacts

Exporters were anxious to vend…

The waiters refilled my shipping crates,

I failed to tell them “When”!

Consumed by aromas of camphor,

The dragon is just around the bend.