The leaves are out

The leaves are out

 in full colours today

 oh, what splendour!

 oh... what beauty.

Autumn is the greatest 

 month.

A time for remembrance,

a time for grieving.

Grieving can be beautiful too,

 said my mother.

Then, she died.

In spring, as the flowers

 blossomed

my mother, brought in

 the groceries

 before retreating to bed

 for a rest,

 she shut her eyes,

 peaches in the sky.

Half a year hence

 a half year of grey,

 the burning sun,

 air-conditioning,

 hot, sleepless nights.

But autumn is the greatest 

 month.

A time for walks

 through yellow woods,

a time for shorebirds

 to take flight,

a time for beautiful men

 , like me, 

 to sit quietly and wonder.

 Autumn 

 is the greatest month.

 An autumn like this

 comes around

 only once. 

--7th november 2024.

Author's Note

still not a hundred per cent. getting there. i will try to respond and comment on everyone's work as much as i can.

Reviews

[jacob erin-cilberto]

I feel this...autumn is my favorite season and I lost my mother several years ago.
My favorite picture of her is one taken in Vermont on a beautiful fall day and she is standing in front of a maple tree, decked out in its orange and gold...and she in her Pendleton jacket.
j.

[Ern M. Yoshimoto]

thanks for sharing J. i hope this year is a year to blossom

[Poetic Beauty]

The season change. Life blossoms and the slowly changes and fades much like life. We have seasons in our life and they slowly fade into the next until our time on earth departs and moves to the next plane for me that would be heaven.

[Eilis]

I said to someone the other day that I felt very detached from my emotions at the moment in the midst of an onslaught of difficult things. I think that we have to sort of get out of our heads and our bodies to some degree to give ourselves space to come back into them and connect with where we have been and what we have felt.

I felt this was very sad. Well, in the way you watch a grieving wife carefully arranging her dead husband’s things or a grieving child refusing to move from the window because they are sure their father will be home soon. We don’t know how to live within the boundaries of these experiences that we can never be prepared for. Here you speak of the beauty of nature but it is in a voice that makes me feel someone is seeking to find a joy in the moment when joy has been sucked away.

The way the loss of your mother is inserted into the center of the narrative creates a second story or center story and I see within the larger scheme the child within the man seeking to make sense of a world that seems perhaps cruel or at the very least indifferent. Mindfulness teaches us to find a focus in the moment that helps us accept reality. Nature offers a grand scale for this, but here I feel that struggle between grief and a desire to heal. The pull between seeking light and feeling pulled by the dark. There’s something Larkinesque about the way that unfolds in the poem. Something profound in that dance.

[Ern M. Yoshimoto]

i have also felt detatchment after being overwhelmed, that happens. i was also told by my therapist the fact i had an imaginary friend as a child meant that my brain was trained to 'dissociate' when things got uncomfortable... i thought that was interesting.

i hope you are okay. being emotionally numb is obviously not a great thing but it's a coping mechanism, so dont hate yourself for it.

regarding my mother's death, i was actually able to face up to it. she talked dying for years and so when it actually happened i was mentally prepares, or as much as one can be.

this work is not about my mother per se. she deserves a long russian novel. this was really just about me, and how i have come to accept her passing. part of this process i hae learned is reawkening your sensitive side: appreciating the small things, stopping to smell the flowers. life is all around you, and there is beauty whererver you look (mindfulness, as you put it succintly). death is a part of life and hating one is to hate the other.

whatever it is youre going through, i hope it passes soon. i hope the flowers bloom for you this spring.

[Eilis]

Thanks, Ern. I’m not sure what my life will be but it will ebb and flow and it always has. Hopefully in more positive ways. You have a healthy view of death. That is good for moving forward. Thanks for your compassionate response.

[Dylan Macadham]

I agree EM, Autumn is my favorite, more soothing than Winter's Woes, Spring is Sprung and Summer blues.
Good one :)

[Ern M. Yoshimoto]

thanks Dylan. this winter was quite merciful for us, but autumn is still special for me.

[Stella Armour]

autumn is the time for reflection, remembrance and grieving for what is never going to be the same again , and yet in all this there is a certain comfort and beauty to be found and the knowing that life begins and ends only to be renewed and reborn for it never dies completely.

[Ern M. Yoshimoto]

thank you Stella. yes, autumn has always had a spiritual effect on me, and the autumn just past was particularly self-reflexive. thank you for your beautifully written review. i hope to see you again soon.

[Matilo]

Your vivid descriptions bring autumn to life, remind me of the beauty of autumn. And It's moving too. Thanks.

[Ern M. Yoshimoto]

thanks Matilo. im very excited to check out your writing soon.

[Laz K.]

"haha...yeah,"...i said to myself reading "beautiful men like me." Diane Ackerman has a nice essay titled "Why Leaves Turn Color in the Fall." A short excerpt that resonates with your thoughts above:

An odd feature of the colors is that they don’t seem to have any special purpose. We are predisposed to respond to their beauty, of course. They shimmer with the colors of sunset, spring flowers, the tawny buff of a colt’s pretty rump, the shuddering pink of a blush. Animals and flowers color for a reason—adaptation to their environment—but there is no adaptive reason for leaves to color so beautifully in the fall any more than there is for the sky or ocean to be blue. It’s just one of the haphazard marvels the planet bestows every year. We find the sizzling colors thrilling, and in a sense they dupe us. Colored like living things, they signal death and disintegration.

[Ern M. Yoshimoto]

that's very ineresting, i did not know that. sometimes i am vain and think that nature is so beautiful just to please me haha. but maybe i asnt wrong?

and yes, that line is meant to be sardonic. although some have told me that i am, though i think they're just being polite.

[Fabian G. Franklin]

This is so beautiful, the tender love practically spilling from the page like blood from an open wound. And Autumn seems to be trying to place a bandage over the hurt by bleeding her own colors in solidarity. I think you really are a "beautiful man". Thanks for sharing your splendid words with us.

[Ern M. Yoshimoto]

thank you for a most wonderful critique. that "beautiful" line was of course, sarcasm. but i am flattered. Ern

[Fabian G. Franklin]

I believe beauty always comes from within and exudes without but never from without reaching inward. I've seen many place high regard on outward appearances, make-up, clothing, jewelry, tattoos, hair styles etc. But it never changes the person beneath the "show". But if you meet one truly beautiful person in your life you know that they will always be beautiful, even to death, without make-up, jewelry or fancy clothes. The beautiful people are not on fashion runways though. They are usually simple, shy, folk who live their live unobtrusively doing deeds of kindness without recognition. "Out of a fullness of the heart the mouth speaks" so according to that proverb our words can be more an indication of our inward beauty than anything on the outside. Reading your words and understanding the place where such words come from, I feel that you really are a beautiful man. Blessings of light, peace and hope. F.

[Ern M. Yoshimoto]

thanks Fabian. very thought-provoking. i think i have met a few people like that. if i am one of them or not, it's not for me to say. but i appreciate your words. thank you friend! Ern.

[MrBlack202]

I love how you paint vivid imagery in the readers mind. Taking the reader on a walk through the autum season.

[Ern M. Yoshimoto]

thank you! appreciate your support always. see you again.

[Patricia Wedel]

dear EW... a Mother's passing in the Autumn Sunset... will forever bring the Charm of the Specks of Gold in her Eyes. Wishing you Blessings. tenderly. Pat

[Ern M. Yoshimoto]

thanks Pat. it's been a confusing time, but i am still able to see colours and for that i am thankful.

[Thomas W Case]

Beautiful work. Great imagery. You paint this scene well.

[Ern M. Yoshimoto]

thank you sir!