A Crown of Autumn Leaves

Our voices press
from us
and twine
around the year's
fermenting wine


Yellow fall roars
Over the ground.
Loud, in the leafy sun that pours
Liquid through doors,
Yellow, the leaves twist down

as the winding
of the vine
pulls our curling
voices—

Glowing in wind and change,
The orange leaf tells

How one more season will alter and range,
Working the strange
Colors of clamor and bells

In the winding
of the vine
our voices press out
from us
to twine

When autumn gathers, the tree
That the leaves sang
Reddens dark slowly, then,
suddenly free,

Turns like a key,
Opening air where they hang

and the winding
of the vine
makes our voices
turn and wind
with the year’s
fermented wine

One of the hanging leaves,
Deeply maroon,
Tightens its final hold, receives,
Finally weaves
Through, and is covered soon

in the winding
of the vine—

Holding past summer's hold,
Open and strong,
One of the leaves in the crown is gold,
Set in the cold
Where the old seasons belong.

Here is my crown
Of winding vine,
Of leaves that dropped,
That fingers twined,
another crown
to yield and shine
with a year’s
fermented wine.

Annie Finch

For Mabon (fall equinox), Sept. 21
copyright Annie Finch 2011

come spring

COME SPRING

The first warm days of spring, give them to me,
a tepid rain, crocus poking through last year's leaves.

Give me the heart of it, pale yellow, sky blue,
trees bare but for the hard buds, the few birds.

To hear the screen door
slam again.
To shoo the flies
from the house,
the spoiled fruit.

I'll take all of it,
Mother of Summer,
the smell
of manure shoveled
over the potatoes,
diesel fumes

from the refuse truck,
scent of creek bottom,
feral,
lime-laced,
cracked open
effusion of rotting eggs.

Even sinus infections
and rusty rake tines
sunk in rank earth
near the shed,
mushroom spores,

the asthmatic crank of winter-bound bikes,
fevers,
flu,
cold sores,
loose ends.
Even the crows,
hawking

their dull black cloaks
for the shiny wings
of iridescent spring.
Let them ride
the rippled air

over the barren Sunday parking lots,

the farther fields,
where the weeds will grow thorny,
wild and tall.

Dorianne Laux
copyright 2008

(today is exactly forty years to the day since i moved to california. it's my anniversary. and because she has put a spell on me so that i cannot see a rabbit without thinking of her, this is for karla.)

Happiest Vernal Equinox to Each of You.

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