Sleepy Autumn Day

I was going to watch the rerun of Martha’s Apprentice last night, but I missed the first half hour because I am addicted to HGTV’s “Small Spaces, Big Style.” Anyone else watch this show? The host of the show is this cute guy with ZERO personality, but I do enjoy seeing what people do with their 450 sq ft apartments – especially since our condo is so small . . .

Today has been very drizzly and foggy here in Northern VA, the kind of day you just want to lay down and take a long nap under a big, warm comforter. Then when you wake up, you want a nice bowl of soup with some warm, crusty bread and a good cup of tea. Then you curl up on your comfy couch and read, read, read . . .

But no, . . . instead you’re sitting at a fluorescently lit desk, staring at the glowing screen, sucking on a Twizzler . . . counting down the hours until you can put your vision into practice . . .

I hope everyone is going to have a good weekend . . . I think we all deserve one . . .

This poem just said “Fall” to me – I don’t know why . . .

White Heron Pond
David Baker

Either the cicadas hushed,
or I fell asleep
as they kept on.
But I go on
hearing them

in willows, in wild ancient oaks,
in the slow orbit
of my sleep or waking,
where I lie beside
White Heron Pond.

Wind whirls through the marsh grasses.
And the slender,
glass wings
of ten thousand
insects flare

in the shadows and circulating air,
the throb and ebb
of their song.
Who says poetry must
stick to the theme?

asks Su Shih when he looks again
at the painting
he loves —
branches of
flowering plum.

Burrowing out of
soft ground,
up to the highest limbs,
the cicadas
mate and sing,

then bear their young, who fall
to earth
to nest, asleep,
for seventeen
years.

Over algae and moss
of the pond's
still surface,
over fields of beans
and sweet fescue,

this song wavers and floats —
so Su Shih, after years
migrating
the provinces, a minor
official, turns

into Su Tung-p’o, the poet —
or as now, like
the swirl of stars,
as in my dream
or waking,

over sun-tipped blooms, over new pipes
poking through
rye grasses,
over paved
curbs

running wild into the woods,
the sure, slow
orbit of things
becoming
the next thing.