Withering toward winter

I love how poetry can enhance a moment. This weekend, winding through the vineyards on the way to the coast, this poem of Robert Mezey’s came to mind:

Touch It

Out on the bare grey roads, I pass
by vineyards withering toward winter,
cold magenta shapes and green fingers
and the leaves rippling in the early darkness. Continue reading “Withering toward winter”

Rainy day in New England

It’s cold and rainy today with a definite feel of the coming of winter. It reminded me of this poem by Robert Mezey (one of that amazing group of students of John Berryman’s at Iowa).  His is a California fall poem, and it always gives me a shiver when I come to the last lines. I especially like the image of fire’s many small teeth, and the sun narrowed to a filament. The poem is full of the feeling of death that waits for all living things and that fall exposes.

Touch It

Out on the bare grey roads, I pass
by vineyards withering toward winder,
cold magenta shapes and green fingers
and the leaves rippling in the early darkness.

Past the thinning orchard the fields
are on fire.  A mountain of smoke
climbs the desolate wind, and at its roots
fire is eating dead grass with many small teeth,

When I get home, the evening sun
has narrowed to a filament.  When it goes
and the dark falls like a hand on a tabletop,
I am told that what we love most is dying.

The coldness of it is even on this page
at the edge of your fingernail.  Touch it.

Robert Mezey