The air is crisp, and speaks to me
of sunlight sparkling through the trees
a bright wine on the other side
of the sun, when I shall be older
and today’s new life will be
that season’s grandfather leaves
floating down to rustle among brothers
and sweep down the hills—
becoming soil, becoming life
soaking into root veins & reborn;
one year’s crisp cool evening calls to the next,
one orbit or one hundred beyond.

She is
the laughter in their sincere joy
the comfort to their childhood pains;
the hand that guides their crooked lines
the confidante and counselor;
she is their sense of beauty,
the definition for their words,
her sternness is their first morality,
her sorrow their first glimpse of death.
She is their simple sense of home
their peace in dark and flashing rain;
she is the garden they will recall,
once mighty oaks, to feel again
the splendor of an honest love
poured out on their unfurling forms.
And in the years before and all around
she is more than they will ever learn:
enduring, persevering, in moments
overwhelmed but steeling on;
for the happiness, the nurtured growth,
for the benefit of those she bore in pain:
she is, with a meaning forged in time 
that she can never fully grasp, beloved
in hearts that will endure beyond—
Mom.

Sometimes when I fail

I like to play back the film
backwards & see myself
rise to triumph from defeat
sprinting heels-first from tragedy.