Evening Opus
The way sunlight emblazons evergreen earth,
the sky spills molten gold over hills and red pines.
In the staining light, silver birches, oaks, quaking aspen,
their roots silted in snowy opalescence,
absorb the last warmth of autumn’s equinox;
naked branches drown in an eruption of fire.
It seems unearthly, this outburst. High-burning clouds
along the shoreline, an icy fountain in the backyard
mirrored in riches, and a flurry of evening grosbeaks
baptized in the fiery flames of exultation.
LAKE OF PERFECT ICE
No wind and a hard freeze overnight,
we glide the flawless rink,
long glissandos, spirals and spins,
figure eights,
observe all beneath as scientists,
this aquarium on the bay,
glacial window
under the blue dome of sky.
See clearly the rocky bottom—
golden shiners, curious yet wary,
darting through eel grasses,
eyeing us through their glassy enclosure;
muskrats streaking shoreward,
streaming frothy bubbles behind;
and painted turtles
burrowing deep in murky silt below.
Oh, to these wild water creatures
we must appear a spectacle,
like odd specimens
in a Darwinian sketchbook—
specters backlit
by frigid sunshine,
our blades echoing
through underwater currents,
etching graffiti
on the ceiling of private lives.
LETTING GO
“We all have two lives.
The second life begins when we realize we only have one.”
― Confucius
Walking Cemetery Road on a night
for wolf and coyote, tree frogs dominant in song.
The owl is near. It torques its neck
with the faint hint of tufted ears.
Let it fly, quiet wings, whose wisdom advises
you leave those insignificant battles behind,
walk graveyards to understand the bones.
Pine needles shiver with the prick of fear.
Darkness lets you know you are alive.
In the wind, the last measure of Amazing Grace
buoys the voice of the night hunters;
a flower moon stalks the tread of your own shadow.
SWEEPING GOVERNMENT SIDEWALKS
Burgundy and blush, this reign of splendor
awaits the final fall
of the mudslingers, massed leaves stained
with the sooty smear
of chimney smog over patio and sidewalk,
servile to the spell of broom, cobwebbed silence.
In autumnal afterlife, even a sleight of wind
can unseat the last leaf, sustaining the march
to November.
Where are the seasons of unbreakable masses
free of grit and sludge,
giant oaks jubilant in straw and stem?
Where are the soles beneath the dust of sweepers
rising to the task of heart and hearth,
of golden leaves unbound in ground glitter,
reclaiming the floors of earth?
Ellen Lager’s work has been published or is forthcoming in The MacGuffin, Neologism Poetry Journal, Sheila-Na-Gig, Encore: the National Federation of State Poetry Societies Anthology, Talking Stick, Thresholds: A Cracked Walnut Anthology, The Moccasin, Crossings, and the Banfill-Locke Chapbook. As a member of the League of MN Poets and the Federation of State Poetry Societies, she has won several awards.
