Michaelmas Warm and sunny today, so I cleaned the feral cat house and added fresh straw, although I don't think she appreciated the interruption. The garden is starting to get that raggedy look, spent French beans and yellowed eggplants. Soon it will be time to put away all the stakes and trellises and plan next season's planting. My roses finished earlier than last year but the asters are singing right now. ©2023 F.Eifrig
An earlier version of this poem was published by Olney Magazine.
Vespers I should go out and gather in what's important, it's Michaelmas, after all, and Sukkot too, according to the calendar on my kitchen wall. The neighbors' lights are off at last, so, under a Harvest Moon I start a backyard fire, and sit surrounded by my garden. Beyond the firelight I can hear night creatures in the milkweed and hyssop, broadleaf aster and lavender, prairie dock and bloody cranesbill. There's a skunk out tonight for certain, usually black-eared possums too, and sometimes, raccoons lumber down the fence line on their clever paws; all those hairy wild saints marching through their own liturgies, calendars of wind and rain, communions kept hidden from a gardener's meddling. I watch the fire for answers but it just burns away time and experience, and won't tell me anything I don't already know. The beauty of this world flares and passes away; a curl of wood smoke carries its own prayers into dark skies. ©2024 F.Eifrig
This poem was published in the Ibbetson Street Press, Issue 55 earlier this year.