Autumnal

The last Bunch 56 x 42 cm pastel painting by Karin Goeppert

THE TURN

This is light you can live in,

warmish, the color of northern ale,

emerging from the sweat bath of

July and early August, here in

the German speaking tropics, but as dry now

as a martini by Noel Coward. Berlin is not just in

but is a rain forest. Sinuses finally unblocked; a

beaker of sweet morning air before coffee and eggs. 

Season of not exactly mellow fruitfulness—we live in

a city of four-million after all—I’m walking in your midst

through the park with its moldy whiff—I can smell again!—

of mushroom and hash on suddenly cool air. Cyclist

shivering in t-shirt, Jogger with blue legs. Some people

just need a little more transition, okay? A few Muslim women,

in the open yet discreetly concealed, gathering pine cones,

plucking some really juicy ones from tree limbs: pine cone soup?

You love the cold months, nature gnarled and empty,  

nestled on the couch in candlelight, that’s you, a “cuppa”

Yorkshire Gold, the working woman’s brew, at your elbow.

Open cook book against blanketed knees. Cat turning

in slow, semi-conscious circle back to where he started from.

Streetlights on at four PM. Cold of morning staying the whole damn day.  

Vivaldi's 4 Seasons - Autumn

Julia Fischer, violin

Autumnal

Herbstlich - Atumnal 30 x 20 cm

SOME LEAVES

Maternity leave, sick leave, annual leave, an extended

leave of absence (sounds like a corporate coup d’ etat,

the quiet extermination, say, of a corner-office exec-

utive rat) planes leaving airports only to arrive at

other, nearly identical airports, children

on the verge of leaving home the first time

and so many people we know or don’t know, on the way   

out as well, some permanently, while others leap straight  

into the arms of some astonished Bayadere

on leave from the corps d’ ballet of a “major” company,

and that leaves Ingrid Bergman leaving Humphrey Bogart

at the end of Casablanca blah-blah, or is it he

who leaves her by staying behind with Claude Raines

though it’s hard to believe there are still

people alive who give a shit this way or that,

Nixon leaving the White House aboard

Marine One, a standard departure/arrival technology,

   was pretty weird

and there are the leaves of a maple dining-room table

opening onto a sumptuous view of melted gorgonzola

   on fresh spinach leaves  

and the only leaves outside right now are those leaves clogging

the drain of my balcony—I almost wrote the “brain” of my

balcony—and I once saw the tender mimosa

blossoms of Marrakech which aren’t leaves at all, but I don’t care,  

somewhere in a canary yellow courtyard near the  

souks, the rug market I think, an orange tree in its   

exact dusty middle, and wish I’d never had to leave,

escorted through graceful old age by fawning servants,

obedient wives, and one tender if toothless household pet.

Verdi - Requiem Dies Irae e Tuba Mirum