Breath wears clothes where faces shine
As dream clothes ache for light,
To give heart-people illumined shrines
That alabaster breaks.
A mother brings her offspring into town,
folded arm in arm,
She wears a serape dress of years
To walk among the crowds.
I hollow out a crawlspace in the attic floor
to keep this resolution strong,
to bear in mind the refuge and the breath,
word of mouth to those who flee the wars.
~~
AE Reiff, 2026
[All rights reserved by the author - Used with permission]
“They made her a grave, too cold and damp For a soul so warm and true;
And she’s gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp, Where, all night long, by a fire-fly lamp, She paddles her white canoe.
“And her fire-fly lamp I soon shall see, And her paddle I soon shall hear;
Long and loving our life shall be, And I’ll hide the maid in a cypress tree, When the footstep of death is near.”
Away to the Dismal Swamp he speeds — His path was rugged and sore,
Through tangled juniper, beds of reeds, Through many a fen where the serpent feeds, And man never trod before.
And when on the earth he sunk to sleep, If slumber his eyelids knew,
He lay, where the deadly vine doth weep Its venomous tear and nightly steep The flesh with blistering dew!
And near him the she-wolf stirr’d the brake, And the copper-snake breath’d in his ear,
Till he starting cried, from his dream awake, “Oh! when shall I see the dusky Lake, And the white canoe of my dear?”
He saw the Lake, and a meteor bright Quick over its surface play’d —
“Welcome,” he said, “my dear one’s light!” And the dim shore echoed for many a night The name of the death-cold maid.
Till he hollow’d a boat of the birchen bark, Which carried him off from shore;
Far, far he follow’d the meteor spark, The wind was high and the clouds were dark, And the boat return’d no more.
But oft, from the Indian hunter’s camp, This lover and maid so true
Are seen at the hour of midnight damp
To cross the Lake by a fire-fly lamp, And paddle their white canoe!
~~ Thomas Moore (1779-1852), 1803 fromEpistles, Odes, and other poems, 1806 [Poem is in the public domain worldwide]
On hill and field October’s glories fade; O’er hill and field the blackbirds southward fly;
The brown leaves rustle down the forest glade,
Where naked branches make a fitful shade, And the last blooms of Autumn withered lie.
The berries on the hedgerow ripen well — Holly and cedar, burning-bush and brier;
The partridge drums in some half-hidden dell,
Where all the ground is gemmed with leaves that fell Last storm from the tall maple’s crown of fire.
The chirp of crickets and the hum of bees Come faintly up from marsh and meadow-land, Where reeds and rushes whisper in the breeze,
And sunbeams slant between the moss-grown trees, Green on the grass and golden on the sand.
From many a tree whose tangled boughs are bare Lean the rich clusters of the clambering vine:
October’s mellow hazes dim the air
Along the uplands and the valley, where The distant steeples of the village shine.
Adown the brook the dead leaves whirling go; Above the brook the scarlet sumacs burn;
The lonely heron sounds his note of woe
In gloomy forest-swamps, where rankly grow The crimson cardinal and feathery fern.
Autumn is sad: a cold blue horizon Darkly encircles checkered fields and farms,
Where late the gold of ripening harvests shone;
But bearded grain and fragrant hay are gone, And Autumn mourns the loss of Summer’s charms.
Yet, though our Summers change and pass away — Though dies the beauty of the hill and plain —
Though warmth and color fade with every day —
Hope passes not, and something seems to say That all our hrightest joys shall come again.
And if the flowers we nurture with such care Must wither, though bedewed with many tears,
They shall arise in some diviner air,
To bloom again, more fragrant and more fair, And gladden us through all the coming years.
The sun sinks slowly toward the far-off west The breeze is freshening from the far-off shore:
So come, fair eve, and bring each weary breast
That sense of tranquil joy, of gentle rest, Felt in the happy Autumns gone before!
~~ George Arnold (1831-1865) from Poems Grave and Gay, 1867
The small red maple leaves, keen-scented, mute, Here fleck the stream, to grape-dark purple hushed:
More rich and lovelier than bloom or fruit Since honey-hearted snowy May-buds blushed.
Between the quick impulsive summer's heat And deep clear-eyed unhasting after-days,
Fall these few hours of warm ripe light, more sweet Than since those apple-pink new morns of May's.
~~ Bliss Carman (1861-1929), 1883 from Through the Year with the Poets, 1886
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]
