Equinox (Night of the Hunter)

One branch of the maple
has turned; here I was looking
out the window, washing
my hair, wondering
if that pale merely maybe
chartreuse leafing was caused
by a burnished summer,
a singed bloom,
the sun here too hot
for Canadian transplants
but the cocoon was all of August
and before her, June; it seems that she
was merely waiting
for the right weather to wear
her new dresses, mossy red
and barely threaded. Barely there
at all, like I said
one branch, near the top,
ready to loose her clothes
to the wind, who seductive tugs
at the clouds, perceptive
now that the rain has paused,
swimming in schools, seed pods
of dark great white sharks
pulling starboard across the mountains
like giants, underbellied and ruddered arks,
I can see them list on their latitude.
In this gray equinox sky,
they bleed a bit
like carnivore watercolors,
and hail to ribbons, fingered
closed rapture and dappled filament,
all told: a much finer artist
than I; When the air changes,
we flock to watch thatches
of leaves and full fruits
commend themselves like pageantries
and fall, just the same
as us humans. the terra
of our birth rises to its crone feet,
like roosters or wrens, aspen glows
and hardly an archangel to greet them
in the dying grass, still
glistening from the exertion
of the prior seasons, turning
into hand-over-fists mothers
milky eyed grown-now kit-foxes
those steadfast hunters
who pan, like mythopoesis
tricksters, in my river-soul
for threshing straw gods and gold.

Reviews

[Ken Simm.]

Remarkable. One moment of the world goes by, paint it as it is, said Cezanne.

[Sel Whiteley]

Can really percieve the Ginsberg influence in the energy of the poem, especially toward the end. I really like how you paint nature here and the masterful use of colour!!!

[Doctor JKC]

"the terra
of our birth rises to its crone feet,
like roosters or wrens, aspen glows
and hardly an archangel to greet them
in the dying grass,"
Archangels are over rated like the deities
in the Hindu pantheon.
(and I agree with Emily, too.)

Wonderful poem!
Jack

[Emily B]

if Emily Dickinson had ever stretched her arms to heaven and convinced herself that she could fly like the little brown wren that stopped on her windowsill, she might have written words that stood nearly as tall as these . . .