Best Familyautumn Poems
In high school, before I dropped out,
I’d sit by the creek bed
smoke cigarettes and grass with my friends and
say; “something is missing, man;
something’s not right.” But
Everyone feels they’re an outcast
at sixteen, sweet
potential bursting unseen
in the long dull mirror
of mediocrity.
Stoned, I’d contemplate the lay of the land:
Dad awaiting the losses of autumn
three siblings, strangers breezing in
and out, one sister younger,
thunder, lightening
the charge in our mother’s storms.
How to navigate that landscape?
Grief wound through dense foliage
my family’s deception
a gemstone buried
many years in acidic soil.
I finally unearthed that small hard mass
and revealed that who I wasn’t—
how I didn’t
fit, was at its root.
Now I tend my autumn garden
and walk its winding paths:
one of stone; my life as given
one of earth that kept that silence
each is someone’s secret tracing
soulprints toward home.
Spilled paint on the clouds
Nora pulling at the strings
The kite an autumn letter
Caught upon the wind
It dips in the dusk colors
As though never to come down.
Days pass
clouds turn to dust
dry pulls across the yard and freezes
not autumn not summer
but time inbetween
blown glass fish
bright red glass heart on my dresser
a howling dog
and rocks from Mamas kitchen window
that teacup
all the butter
no one's watching