Autumn Comes To Healdsburg - Lee Perron

[Larry Robinson]

Autumn Comes To Healdsburg

Fall arrives, time’s most favored season
at last the heart, the mind loosens its fist so that I no longer need to know who I am
i return to the hills and the great presences
light, heat, clouds, the bull pines
to recover for myself the purity of the falling world to enfold it like a pearl in the mind’s silence
i read the calligraphy of the oaks under
the fading skies, the tall grass bending in the meadow, the last robins— i am a circle reaching
the first place for the first time
in youth among fall leaves i refused
to acknowledge the ancient writing—
that the basket of summer empties, that the hours of men are as wind-driven clouds
and yet among fall leaves
i was overjoyed with the beauty of loss
now i stand on autumn’s wooded knoll that my life too may vanish
that night may fall into the earth’s arms
time is calling her trout from
their playgrounds in the sea
to river mouth, and redemption, and fury
for it is by means of the long delay
that we come to the righteousness of passion.

	- Lee Perron