Invitation to Intimation

An Intimation of Autumn :

My ‘Own’ Devotional Ode …

By  L.P. - G.

 I

A season’s sweetest feast

Descends, amid cool misty morns;

Through lushly hallowed fields

It treads, besieged by rampant storms. 

August plays the sentinel,

Relieved of farewell norms,
        A leaf burns golden; later, red;

(And hence, September’s born).

    It plots with poise to consecrate
       A fruitful sun we celebrate;
    How does it bring such grace and light

    To dappled harvests, void of blight?
       Ripe crops are seen to richest core;
         Bloating the gourd, through a sweetness thus poured;

       Setting fall’s table and still so much more,

           Until failing buds ‘waken’: freshened… restored.

Hence, fetch latent flowers for every type bee,
Send warmest-wishes on free, bended knee;
          For Summer holds promises right up its sleeve

Of this, (of course): I’ll admit,

I  SO believe!!

II

Yet, Summer sun and Autumn sun, past friendship of a kind;

Whoever seeks their succor-strength may sometimes coolly find
  Both seasons dwelling carelessly along a drafty floor,
     Tresses gently lifted-up by winter’s windy score;
  Or on a half-reap'd furrow-trail, now fast and sound asleep,
      Dipped in shades of poppy-smoke; red-crimson, crisp and deep,
          Dreaming not of fallowed fields, but fertile swaths of flowers:

Watching through the sun’s keen lens, these final oozing hours.
  And sometimes like a helping-hand, one of them, or more,

Embarks on fields grown thick with wheat, returned to nature’s core.
      September spins its sturdy web across a trenchant brook;

      The night-sky, traced by cider-spice, gives one last solemn look.

III

  Way past us now are songs of Spring;

 None thrive in Autumn’s haze;
      Think of them, ‘NOT’; their scents imbued:

Scorched-hot by Summer’s gaze.

 In wailful tones, chilled to the bone,

Cicadas sadly moan,

While lambs bleat-out dejected breath

Whose vapor fades to stone.

      Adrift in pallid rivers spent by summers tossed asunder;
Embraced by light-wind’s rhythmic touch,

       Comes softly pliant thunder.     

Crickets dance with plaintive song,

In trebled cadence, ‘soft’;
Robins meld in mournful tunes

From quiet garden-lofts;
         Gathering swallows twitter still, but also gently sigh,

‘Pure notes of grim dismissal’

Part the late September sky:

  And so it goes, and so it goes;

        (September reaps, what September sows…).

Written by Lisa Porter-Grenn, M.D.

(with all apology to Keats)

HAPPY B’DAY

TO YOU…

EVEN ONE DAY

TOO LATE!!!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozNKrHck7gQ

OF DRUIDS AND BARDS...and those 'first fruits'

The Cry of the Fruitful Corn-Gods

Low sun, equatorial warmth is

Spreading its Lughnasa-like wings today;

For it is August (my friend) and the first fruits

Taste especially sweet right now.

Behold the Celtic waters as they wash

Across three pagan pilgrims,

Steeped in the bluster of bilberry wine;

Watch as it drips little by little into the mouths

Of the matchmakers and trade-mongers

Who’ve climbed the tepid tops of the clover-hills.

Summer is slow to swoon

Toward its last laugh

Just yet, while novices embark

On life’s ceremonial play-list;

Such ‘cycles of surrender’ quicken

To the memory of

Corn husk dolls who,

Once upon a time,

Stood contentedly ‘vanitized’

By the smolder of muck and mold

And evaporating bonfires.

Yet, Gaelic galleys forever reel

In pure reckless gratitude

For this half-way mark between

The solstices; Lugh,

In his perfect perpetuity,

Selects the finest china

For a warm and gentle harvest.

Beltane,

Imbolc, and Samhain,

Betray their own sad story:

Having never tendered the earliest corn…

This remains Lughnasa’s

Greatest glory.

 But should even one

‘Druidic Dream’

Drown in the

Chastened rains that pander to

The gentle green plains

Of Emerald Ireland:

And the good Gaels of Kildare

Would simply melt in disillusion,

And catch a quiet waltz with King Puck 

and his

Band of fruitful corn gods.

Poem written by Lisa Porter-Grenn    Copyright 2013

THE LAST SUMMER-NOTE THE...

THE LAST SUMMER-NOTE THE 

CICADA SINGS…

I

Fat gladiolas wave and bow 
To black-eyed Susans’ lacy knots: 
And in this summer scene of theirs
Are peridots and lady-bugs,

Marigolds and August hugs; 
Fields of sunflowers whose essence stands

The test of time

 in

“Autumn’s hands”.

II

They meet, they greet

‘mid bumblebees,

Alive in space on pollened-wings;

Parading nectar’s polished grace,

Two flowery locks come face-to-face

I’ll always praise the joy it brings:

That last summer-note the cicada sings…

(Yet fall will claim its final fling)

 Oh August!!

 

Copyright 2013

Poem written by Lisa Porter-Grenn

Past the Stretches of Lavender Silk and Thistle Milk

Past the Stretches of Lavender Silk and Thistle Milk

By Lisa Porter-Grenn

Caught by the sweet stretch of yellowing summer that beckons

Motionlessly under the burden of half-spent ice-cream dreams

And long tepid pools of watermelon sugar,

Stand the slowly softening sidewalk rinds hiding deep secrets

That haven't yet been opened.
This summer scene spins delectably throughout the eons of time:
From powdery chalk lines to tousled jump-ropes

To lethal metal jacks amid a game of cat’s-eye marbles.

There are rules, and rules get broken

Much like the windows opened wide

To catch the freshness that floats away

Into remote corners of the world

Only to find that painted casements promise comfort

And the flimsy window screen, a measure of security

Before the rains begin.

Yet, it is the swarming ant hills

That amuse me the most;

And I imagine their deep abyss where drones carry on

Solely for the brittle queen within her nest of paper jelly:
A fuzzy dowager calling out quick shots to

Her cheerless rank of pithy eunuchs who fetch

Her Royal Highness scores of milk and honey.
Do they gather how amazed we all are

By their tidy industry and immense sense of duty?

Probably not, for their brains are

Too tiny to think beyond the

Ordinary drudgery demanded of

Such rank and file creatures

Inhabiting the sands below time;

These busy denizens of the gravel pits!

The smell of lilies and lavender meld

Softly with thistle-milk and cut grass,

So is the summer wind before me.

A mourning dove with license moans

In tones that speaks of dewdrops and early

Evening fog in a throat made low by cloud cover.
Trumpeting toads eternally chant and dance by the

Edge of the fountain, its water-spray

Lightening the burdens collected through

Hours spent in weighty recovery. Yet, the seriousness
Of the soaring noon-time temperature appears lost

On most everyone, as they toy with sycamore leaves

Left in winsome piles collected by the sunlight
around us. The scent of autumn is heavy... And you,

You wonder why I pore over the days’ events

Like a sojourner with road map in hand.

The answer comes easy (you see), for there

Are still secrets that flee from the beam

Of empirical evidence…

 And that’s all right by me. 

Poem written by Lisa Porter-Grenn

Copyright 2013

XOXOX