How Autumn Begins

by Don Thompson

Nothing close to a chill this morning,
but cool enough to remember
how the cold felt and to know
that it’s coming soon.

Leaves yellow on the edges,
dying from outside in;
green fruit that never got started,
and one last fig that must be ripe:

Soft, but the skin’s leathery.
It plucks easily, though,
and tastes as sweet as anything
summer had to offer.

Eudaimonia

by Don Thompson

Water grass knee-high in ditch bottom muck:
A green so intense it would last all summer
And then some in a better world.
But here it dries up in a week.

Saffron

by Don Thompson

Smoke from distant wildfires
creates the illusion of clouds—
of faux cumulonimbus
offering rain like those promises of peace
that no one falls for.

And behind its pall this morning,
the sun glows almost saffron
as if to honor a self-immolated monk
who died for
some long forgotten lost cause.

The fires will keep burning for miles,
for days; and years from now,
driving by, we’ll see snags
like blackened skeletons
still standing upright in the new growth.

Just A Bird

by Don Thompson

The owl has flown infinite distances
and for eons to get here,
somewhere close by in the dark.

If you could see it, you’d recognize
your own fear caught in its eyes
like an insect in amber.

You’ve felt talons seize your wrist
in a bad dream;
waited all night for the beak;

and heard the owl call softly—
low notes like an angel of Apocalypse
warming up his shofar

Listening to a Crow Lecture

by Don Thompson

Clinging to the old oak
as if tenured, a crow
has been holding a seminar.

Three or four students listen,
compelled, powerless to resist
nihilism: Nothing is good,

according to that harsh caw,
not at all hard to translate
into human sentiments.

I’d take notes myself,
but keep being distracted by
how eager the leaves seem,

motionless in dead air, to dance
as soon as the breeze comes up.
And it will.

Scrub land, south of AJB Ranch

by Don Thompson

Was it crows in their black
soutanes, relentless Jesuits,
or was it random night prowlers
that picked the fur to pieces,
bit by bit,
and scattered the rabbit’s carcass
across half an acre?

Or was it the finger of God
sorting through flesh and bone
to find something numinous,
something that belongs only to Him?

West Side Canal, Freeborn Intake

by Don Thompson

The fog has held off, so far,
clinging to the hills
until it thins to commonplace haze
an hour after dawn.
It’s not quite the season.

But soon, when the oyster white sun
is too feeble to resist,
the fog will close in, will inundate
every solid thing we need
to make sense of ourselves—

blurring our certainties
until we know
how ancient seafarers must have felt
coming at last to the end
of their flat earth.