Giving Up

It is that time of year when you must give up. The need to remain green gives way to the desire to bear fruit – even though you know the fruit will be other, and not you. You surrender to the hot and sapping sun, the flow of the warm river and the chuckle of the gulls; for it is autumn, and all you want to do is weep for the loss of your substance.

Yet it isn't the first dead summer of your life, nor the first fall. There will be winter after this, and you have survived many winters. Your historical mind, the mind that is an alchemist's, the mind perceiving, the mind half-convinced by experiment – all these minds conspire to tell you that you will survive. And perhaps you will, perhaps it is indeed the most likely alternative. But for now, it is the sharp cliff edge between the height and the plain, the salt water and the sea strand.

Do you feel like giving up?

Before you do, think about what exactly it is that you're giving up. Here's a poem from my idealistic educator days.

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The Places of Compassion

Don't look for me
in the quiet places of social graces, I am too sore,
too hurt to linger there.

Don't look for me
in the midst of pinwheeling crowds, turning under the winds
of trends and status; for I am stationary in the midst
of such revolutions.

Look for me mirrored
from the desperate eyes of addicts, the freezing eyes
of homeless, and the starving eyes of children who don't know
what hunger they feel when they fall.

That's where you'll find me,
with gentle hands cupping the face of realities,
my movements belly deep, my laughter non-existent.

That's where you'll find me,
standing strong and spread under my crown of sky with
the last velvet of the hunted scraped against my shins.

That's where you'll find me,
in the most unlikely place, with the commonest and closest
of things.

Ruth Solomon>

Autumn Tests

A test.

Everything fails.

The greens turn amber, then red,
then brown and dead.

The flowers bloomed and fruited,
their seeds rooted.

Everything falls.

Apart.

$FF: A Node To Autumn

This verse in solemn memory of John Keats
In case he turns beneath the island streets.

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Today we write about this island land.
We write and write until we understand
About white men and whiter who have planned
Our island destiny carved out from sand,
Our chaos mastered by a single brand
Controlled by some clever doctrinal gland.
Now we have found the many rhymes with 'and'
Let us restart and do the work at hand.

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We live within the tropic zone of heat
Where seasons blend into a single haze
Neither too cold nor comfortably neat;
Seasonless we, unseasoned all our days.

Sometimes it rains; this too we must endure,
Our iron rusts beneath the wet abuse.
Such times it spawns within the deep verdure
The fragrant stench of enervate refuse.

Most times it chunders on in blissful damp
Neither like hell nor purgatorial friend;
Life here does not impose too great a cramp
Upon the lifestyles which we do subtend.

We have descent from proud Oriental line,
Our fathers wrought from coolie status this:
A pleasure-dome of rigorous design
Which shows what was, and can be, also is.

And ending here we must defy the odds
To mention not as most parochials would
Some tribute mighty to the leeward gods
Who from our fathers took what praise they could.