Of Influence
Sometimes an early autumn light
seems to lift from silent earth
regret that knowledge comes too late.
Yet harvest on the heels of life
is not the end but simply change.
Wheat becomes the flour the bread,
becomes the man becomes his child;
seeds fall, the earth asleep not dead.
And when we die all we have been,
all we have ever done or said
having made our shape lives on,
whispers in a winnowing wind
and time ensures the earth is sown
with what we were. Ideas we held,
our grains of truth, our quick seeds thrown
at random, soon become a field.
(c) Ted Walter 1986
October
The year takes on a change of tense;
low angles of the light
a few leaves falling,
their dappled lilt
a counterpoint to commonsense.
We know the longer nights
will soon be coming
and yet, air bright
twig-still, an acorn’s rapid fall
suggests new life, not death.
while bracken, drawing
a mid-day breath,
hums a wing-lit madrigal
as midges from their sloth
lift: a last sunning
above cool earth.
(c) Ted Walter 1986
Both from Choosing Yellow, Yorick Books (1986) and Blue Moon, Willing Words (1999).