FIRST NIGHT OF AUTUMN

Photo by S. Auberle

Autumn is a fancy woman

walking the streets tonight.

A lady whose lover has gone,

turning her dry and brittle

as that icy shriek of wind

bending once-golden grasses

down onto cold earth.

She walks and watches

the waning moon,

the fading hours of light,

weeping for that summer love

who sipped her like the finest wine,

who whirled and twirled her heart,

vowing their dance would never end.

Autumn is the woman

in gaudy red silk,

there on the street corner

under that lamp,

holding off the winter

of her days, tired

brown leaves swirling at her feet.

~ mimi

HAPPINESS

Photo by S. Auberle

"Happiness makes up

in height

for what it lacks

in length."

~Robert Frost

LEST YE FORGET

Artist Unknown

Saturday, September 19th is

International Talk Like a Pirate Day

FROM THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF REALLY GOOD HIJACKERS (AARGH)

COMES THE EVER-POPULAR PIRACY WORKSHOP!

OR

HOW TO BE A PIRATE IN JUST 12 EASY LESSONS!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

YOU WILL LEARN:

1) How to chop off a limb in one fell swoop, and which wood to use for your peg.

2) What size parrot is best?

3). What does "Avast" really mean?

4). Nearly painless procedure for putting out your eye.

5). To hook or not to hook.

6). How to look like Johnny Depp in just 24 hours.

7). Long John Silver & Bluebeard, what did they actually do?

8). For maximum effectiveness, how long should a gangplank be?

9). Which rum carries the most punch?

10). What sea chanties attract the most chicks?

11). Best store to find skull and crossbone flags,

and last, but not least:

12). How to roar with most velocity, the word AAARRRGGGHHHHH

SIGN UP NOW--SPACE IS LIMITED!!!! GOLD COINAGE,

VISA AND MASTER CHARGE ACCEPTED!!!

~ Sharon Auberle

CLOUDS

Photo by S. Auberle

"Clouds appear free of care

and carefree drift away.

But the carefree mind

is not to be found...to find it

first stop looking around."

~ Wang An-Shih

A Drifting Boat: Chinese Zen Poetry

AN UNPOEM

Photo by S. Auberle

Today is one of those days when I just don't know where I'm going--in my life, I mean. You'd think by this age I'd know. Not so. Since I'm feeling clueless, it seemed right to go somewhere useful this morning. The dump fit that category. Packing up garbage can ground a person fairly quickly--did we really drink that much wine? On my return from that highlight, I stopped at the roadside market to buy a cider doughnut...a celebration of the season. Back home, I ate it, then took a big, fat, juicy, purple plum (breaking the way-too-many-adjectives-rule in the meantime), sat out in the swing and ate it too. Why does food always seem to be the antidote for disturbing questions of an existential nature? Bees circled enviously about me. Cicadas sang. The plum was too sweet. I tossed the pit, with flesh still clinging to it, out under the apple tree, where I waited for Luciano, my porcupine neighbor, to appear. Truth be told, it could be Lucia I was waiting for, but I really prefer not to get close enough to distinguish porcupine sex. At any rate, he or she must have been busily engaged in worthwhile work elsewhere, unlike myself, since no waddling little creature appeared. So I watched a grasshopper strolling past my foot. Tried to write a poem. Nothing happened. The grasshopper looked up at me, as if to say get with it, lady, winter's comin' soon. He was very annoying, with his gray-green body and red legs poised to leap on me at any second. He also had a vaguely disgusting looking wet sort of tail and kept touching things with it. I made him go away and then I stretched out in the sun and fell asleep. Still don't know where I'm going, but the grasshopper seems to.

~ mimi

SINCE THAT DAY

Digital image by S. Auberle

for the longest time after 9/11, I couldn't write at all. Finally, weeks later, these words came.

I want to write about Colin Powell's words--we are Americans, we don't walk around terrified. I want to tell him he's wrong. I want to write about times of war--lying in my mother's womb as the skies of Pearl harbor explode; cradling my infant son in the Vietnam years and now, in yet another generation, how that son's twin sons are trying to be born too soon--into yet another time of hate. I want to write about serenity--cottonwoods on the Fox river; turtles and geese and autumn flowers; but the words won't come. I want to write about courage--a new moon high in the sky this afternoon and beside it, a first trail of returning jets. I want to write about hope-- this lily in the window of a house and the promise it holds of peace, but my fingers remain stilled. I want to write of fear--my train trip three days later--the passengers' certainty that World War III has begun. Two women in the seats behind me shoot tequila as we roll across the country, finally collapsing in each other's arms--the brassy one with crows nest hair sobbing against her friend in zebra slippers who colors in a child's book. I want to write about caring--for the large man across the aisle whose very breaths through the night seem each a victory. I need to write about beauty-- the New Mexico sunset-- long shadows sliding down the mesas, as a quarter moon sets in glowing, golden rose. Finally, I want to write of compassion--the hawk-faced Navajo who boards the train in Gallup, sits beside me and removes his glasses, wiping tears from his eyes. I want to comfort him, but do not intrude on the space we share, that space so carefully maintained in sleep. I wake once and look at him, his face softened in sleep--vulnerable, so very, very vulnerable...

~ Sharon Auberle

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Digitally altered artwork ~S. Auberle

"You save yourself

or you remain unsaved."

~ Alice Sebold

ODE TO THE TOMATO

Photo by S. Auberle

Remember the day you planted them?

Waiting and waiting for the time

that was just right,

no more frost in the air?

Then the tender days

when, impatiently, you lingered,

checking daily, but

they simply lay there, bent to the ground,

though unseen green fire

coursed through them

as they gained strength to stand alone,

tentatively at first, soon strong and proud.

Finally, yellow flowers

shyly began to emerge, like small stars,

the first signs of tomato...

and you whispered to them, tenderly,

weeded and coaxed, inhaled

their pungent aroma, like no other,

till at last...voila!

First tiny fruits appear,

the rain falls, August sun beats down,

green globes begin to hang heavy.

By now your impatience is immense,

uncontainable.

You yearn for red, even pink will do.

Yet still, the tomato says wait...

Like love, the love apple cannot be rushed,

it comes in its own time

and there is nothing you can do about it.

At last one day,

you and the tomato are ripe.

Your taste buds are quivering

with anticipated ecstasy.

Finally, that first, sun-warmed bite!

Let the seeds and juices

flow down your chin.

Laugh.

Slurp.

Succumb.

~ mimi

For IsAbel

Handmade paper sculpture by IsAbel Beaudoin

A great lady and artist died this week, IsAbel Beaudoin, one of my heroines and inspirations. Like all great creative people, she was an original. There was no one like her, and there never will be again. It was a privilige to know her, if only briefly. I'd started this poem just a few weeks ago, and it may not be polished or finished...

IsAbel

"...originality above all else."

~I.B.

It was all there, all that was left

of the passion that consumed her...

prints, metal sculptures, fabric, batiks;

Noah's Ark--the procession of carved animals

marching across an entire wall;

handmade paper, cast and painted;

a purple lady, tall and regal,

like IsAbel herself,

oils, watercolors, acrylics, pastels,

all the pieces shining as brightly as she.

Two times I was privileged to meet her,

once at her home, with bright batiks fluttering

from a clothes line in the sun,

like flags announcing the country of art,

and then at the great show of her life's work,

with treasures enough to fill a warehouse,

where she looked at me from her wheelchair,

smiled and said,

I'd like to paint you in those blue beads...

Today, at eighty seven, IsAbel is failing.

Creation no longer emerges

from those trembling hands,

and that is how we know, her caregiver explains.

Except for one day, the woman says,

when she arrived to find a plain white cabinet

that held IsAbel's paints had been transformed.

Tall trees danced on the doors

and sides of the white box,

painted in a shaky hand, but vibrant and alive.

IsAbel never could bear a colorless world,

not when there was so much splendor in hers.

~Sharon Auberle

In Memoriam: IsAbel Beaudoin 1921-2009

THE MOON IS A WOMAN TONIGHT

Digitally altered photo of collage by S. Auberle

the moon

is a woman tonight

oval face calm

gazing wistfully

upward to the east

where the brightest planet

in the sky ignores her

intent on his own brilliance

while she, three quarters full

with desire, lights up hearts

around the world

except that glittering one

far beyond her reach

~ mimi

AS LIFE AND LOVE GO

Photo by S. Auberle
Some words of wisdom (and so true) from an artist friend of mine...

"As life and love go

nothing is predictable,

everything is possible,

and nothing is as

you think it will be."

~ Linda Walburn