Swinging

There is the rush of air over her face
Her pigtails flown back
Like a comet,
Eyes wide open
Grabbing the chains like
Chariot reins,
Up, Up, and still Up,
Into the turning blue sky
Like some old celestial spirit
Ascending.

But, there is always the returning,
The pull of gravity.
So her blue sky views
Give way
To the crater of
The mobile home park,
The Cardinal motel,
Old rails where the trains crept off.

And she,
some bright thing in the dim shadows
Of the playground,
Hits the ground once with her feet,
And pushes back,
To get speed for
Another try up.

**

Late Summer

Sometimes back on the old farm
With the Queen Anne’s spiderwebbed
And thistle blowing
You know what Yeats meant
By deep heart’s core-
But he was wrong about water lapping-
It’s more like music.

When lightning opens the sky
And touches the trees like feathers.
When waves of goldenrod sweep
Soft across the horizon.
When swallows sweep and fly
In the dusk and dwindling light.

This is real music-
Not made by human hands
Or breathed by human mouths
But squeezed out of some bright corner
Of a universe’s deep heart core.

**

Nana’s Glass

There was truly a majesty of glass
In Nana’s cabinets.
Short Depression glasses
She never let us hold,
Bold colors woven like
Bands of sunset,
Blue glass of the deepest blue
Of summer twilight
Where laughter flowed
Like streams of water
From Nana’s porch.

Then there were the red ones,
Red like lips,
Those Nana said were,
“just courtin’ glasses,”
Like that was supposed to
Explain where they came from,

But there must have been magic in them,
the red ones,
Or so we thought then-
When sunset deepened into twilight,
And fireflies dipped over the fences
In some slow waltz time,
Nana drank tea from a red glass-
And seemed both sad and happy
And sang old songs
That echoed like memory
in the dying light.

**

Fall Comes

Fall comes with an easy light
Through the shutters
As if there is a lighter load
Than the weight of summer.
So, believing again there is a small chance
This fall will go on and on,
We look out on open spaces and red leaves
And goldenrod breaking and

Breaking like waves against the side field,
Thrown against the fences,
So our souls follow, turning round lighted trees,
Moths trying our chance
Upward.
But this October, like all others
Stretching before and after us,
Ends, and the lighted trees,
One by one by one,
Wink out like lanterns in the dusk.