Urgency

Trees mark the season.

The poplars on the hillside stand alone in their brightness, the oaks burning down to russet and sienna, and the rest dark in their bareness.

Autumn energizes us. We feel an urgency to accomplish what we can because time is short.

Wisdom comes from knowledge of mortality.

Motivation comes from death.

copyright 2010 J. O'Brien, all rights reserved

Big Events

Yesterday, midges hovered in the low beams of the setting sun.

Their revival for a few warms days is noteworthy.

This morning, snow birds arrived.

Slate-colored juncos, down from the arctic circle.

The first snow won't be far behind. It never is.

This evening, reading the day's news, I think snow birds pecking at cracked corn under the feeder is the really big event.

copyright 2010 J. O'Brien, all rights reserved

Reduction

The hill is in the trees.

Rain has thinned the crowns so we can see it.

Shade lies covered on the ground.

Migrating birds arrive in waves, seen a day or two and gone again. Robins, white-throated sparrows, their offspring with them.

Hear the wind's purer song.

The year gets down to basics.

copyright 2010 J.O'Brien, all rights reserved

Serenata

It's nothing, really,

A knot just here, an aging man

Free to walk the fields at night

And practice self-delusion;

It's of little moment, the moon

A hole above the trees,

Briars clawing sleeves

Bloodthirsty and roaring,

Screech owls serenading voles,

Dogs in tremolo on chains,

Eruptions in the joints, well,

I'm fine, old friend, and you?

copyright 2010 J. O'Brien, all rights reserved

Major College

A plain of tailgaters as seen from Heinz Field looking toward PNC Park.

Red Lot 7A

 Red Lot 7A is a triangular patch of asphalt under the highway and against a shale cliff. Small in comparison to the plain of parking lots that connects the two professional sports stadiums on Pitsburgh's North Shore, 7A feels like a private club. Food on folding tables, full bars in the open backs of SUVs, chatter and laughter under the overpass, it feels collegial, like the best days of our youth when we celebrated Home-Game-Saturday-mornings in the fraternity house before walking en masse under our greek banner down Bayard Street and up Cardiac Hill to the game.

At least we think that's what we did.

That was so long ago we wore sports coats and ties.

That was when we cared about fitting in.

Now we like to think we are wiser and stand less on pretense. 

 And in that we are still conforming.

Husbandry of Hours

The day is our journey, the hour our moment.

Let us tend to them.

If we are hopeful and high-minded in our travels between fire and ice, disappointment seems inevitable.

But if we fill the hour as Emerson advised, leaving no crevice for a repentance or an approval, that is happiness.

Maybe then, in our autumn, we will, like Emerson, find within, not wrinkles & used heart, but unspent youth.

copyright 2010 J. O'Brien, all rights reserved

10 Days Difference

More sky, and more to come, until the blue presses down

from rim to rim, and clouds scrape the ground, and the woods

is a deeper, wilder place where the wind runs free

and sounds like a warning, saying she, saying she.

copyright 2010 J. O'Brien, all rights reserved

First Freeze

First freeze purifies the morning.

Decline's rough beauty stops us in the field.

We love subtlety and depth, an acquired taste, we like to think, requiring time and work.

In this late quarter, focus on the effervescence of leaves in wind and light.

May memory serve when senses dull.

copyright 2010 J. O'Brien, all rights reserved