4 Poems We Love (Fall 2022)
Calling all poets! We’ve worked with musicians and photographers at our GlampLyfe campsite in Ohio. Submit your poetry to us on Facebook or Instagram. We’d love to feature it on our blog. Let us know if you would be interested in reading a newsletter or magazine of visitor and local photo and poetry submissions. If you’d like to read more poems we’ve curated, check out the Summer 2022 article. We’ve tried to preserve the styles and formatting of each work.
Autumn, Joan Mitchell (1935)
The rusty leaves crunch and crackle,
Blue haze hangs from the dimmed sky,
The fields are matted with sun-tanned stalks —
Wind rushes by.
The last red berries hang from the thorn-tree,
The last red leaves fall to the ground.
Bleakness, through the trees and bushes,
Comes without sound.
Red, Cheryl Savageau (2006)
In his new poem
the red autumn woods
are a metaphor
for leftist martyrs
We are traveling east through a maple forest
that blazes the hillsides on both sides of this winding
back-country road Look at the trees I want to tell him
Listen The trees have their own stories to tell
like the story of fire deep within the heart They too
have been martrys in the long war against the land, a nation
cut down, children denied
A hundred years ago these hills were bare of trees
the stone walls that wind through them
the illusion of ownership Now the hills are red with maples
My heart is leaping out to meet them, my eyes
cannot be full enough Though acid falls from the clouds
maples have gathered on the hillsides
in every direction See how they celebrate
They are wearing their brightest dresses
Come sisters, let me dance with you
I offer you a song
Let me paint
it red with
passion
You are
all the women
I have ever loved
And Now It’s September, Barbara Crooker (2020)
and the garden diminishes: cucumber leaves rumpled
and rusty, zucchini felled by borers, tomatoes sparse
on the vines. But out in the perennial beds, there’s one last
blast of color: ignitions of goldenrod, flamboyant
asters, spiraling mums, all those flashy spikes waving
in the wind, conducting summer’s final notes.
The ornamental grasses have gone to seed, haloed
in the last light. Nights grow chilly, but the days
are still warm; I wear the sun like a shawl on my neck
and arms. Hundreds of blackbirds ribbon in, settle
in the trees, so many black leaves, then, just as suddenly,
they’re gone. This is autumn’s great Departure Gate,
and everyone, boarding passes in hand, waits
patiently in a long, long line.
Between Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice, Today, Emily Jungmin Yoon (2018)
I read a Korean poem
with the line “Today you are the youngest
you will ever be.” Today I am the oldest
I have been. Today we drink
buckwheat tea. Today I have heat
in my apartment. Today I think
about the word chada in Korean.
It means cold. It means to be filled with.
It means to kick. To wear. Today we’re worn.
Today you wear the cold. Your chilled skin.
My heart kicks on my skin. Someone said
winter has broken his windows. The heat inside
and the cold outside sent lightning across glass.
Today my heart wears you like curtains. Today
it fills with you. The window in my room
is full of leaves ready to fall. Chada, you say. It’s tea.
We drink. It is cold outside.
