Mr. Africa Poetry Lounge!

YOU SEE HOW SEASONS TWIST THOSE CAUGHT IN THEM


Here in September already you feed
on lean November light, world at your feet,
the summer of your needy slowing shows.


So where if anywhere does autumn fit?
What do we harvest now that time is short?
How can mute light affect the ways we think?


The light and the dark: fall, a falling, equinox.
In San Francisco light the subtlety of change:
about a two-week shift from one to the other.


Some people will get sick during this time,
people often die at dawn or at dusk: transition -
a good time to reflect, reorganize or focus


on sadness (seasonal affective disorder) looking
backward or forward toward winter and hibernation,
where what you see going on sometimes


you really don't want to look at or feel.
Full fall. How do you work with this? West and
the setting sun. Tune in what's going on


in nature. Eat seasonally. Farmer's market.
Not too much fruit anymore, but peppers, beets,
carrots, root veggies. What's growing, what's ripe?


Fruit ripens to root: the clue to what will grow
back into the body as plant; herbal, tonics,
digestive, muscular-skeletal, liver, immunity.


Light freezes dark, soft tendrils harden, a mattress
of sky turns, leaves smother the dew that piles
upon your planted summer loves. You bless daylight.

Written by Al Young

<----> SEND THIS POEM TO A FRIEND! <---->

Mr. Africa Poetry Lounge