A Poetic Pondering

I love autumn. Though perhaps counter-intuitive, I believe it is when life begins. We are introduced to what we have to gain by the demands of what to lose. 

As the air cools, I often hope for more company in my wandering and pondering, and then I remember that I am in the present of ancients who have seen many a day before me, and will outlast the life I have to give. 

Walk with me, with and through them. 

*   *   *

The Monastery

When the sun starts to become sullen

and the evening's shadows boast greedily,

having convinced more hours to spend their minutes

in night's dark hallways,

and a cool crispness rings upon my flesh

as small bell towers rise below struck hairs,

autumn's hymns call me back into the monastery.

It is here that prayers are walked quietly

upon a cluttered carpet of sticks and bones,

where penance is paid in the turning over

of inhabited rocks and the stacking of stones,

and propitiation is but a memory.

I was initiated into this order at a young age,

vowing devotion wonder-struck and worry-free

under the chapel's humbly bowed beams.

Brotherhood beckoned.

I belong with my assured companions,

the consecrated collect:

each characteristically tall and thick-skinned,

resilient, though rough to the touch,

soft-spoken and sure-footed.

Stoics, they teach a simple religion:

spend your days only on growing up, reaching out,

feeding friends, and sheltering enemies.

They are known to keep the feast throughout the seasons,

but it is for this particular performance I eagerly return:

this intentionally tardy liturgy of a peculiar Pentecost.

It is during this rite that even those

who are typically and methodically timid

upturn their many hands skyward

to exalt the heavens with amber eminence

and, with patterned rhythm and ritual,

they ignite their holy heads with flamboyant foliage.

Though sainted as icons of security,

enshrined as pillars for ecological stability,

my brothers immolate their honor for the sake of the cycle,

and present their sacrifice through personal purgation:

they willingly offer down their first-fruits

to feral fauna and to whoever's found forsaken,

for food, for preservation, for investment, for beauty,

so as to shuttle a tithe to the stewards of earth's

ever-asking yet equanimical economies: gravity and entropy.

Once rid of their fruit, nut, and seed,

they loose their flaming garments as a final charity,

to warm and cheer that same cool cloudbreath

that called me here to be a witness.

And so the brothers, those prophets,

rend their recital robes, leaf by leaf,

their unbound folios of wisdom descending,

stripping bare their generous branches

to ready what remains

for eventual resurrection.  

*   *   *

Blessings this autumn to my brothers, sisters, and all those in between. Find warmth in the fires of the Creator's embracing love. 

- Jason