Sun and Shadow

The clouds pass overhead.
Shadows fall on the November mountains,
the color dulled from both the season
and the lack of light.

The sun falls on the corn,
standing tall and dry,
waiting for harvest,
a post card from another era.

You walk on the field’s edge,
suddenly, temporarily, old.
Dry and brittle, but like the corn,
only for a season.

You pray for the new seasons.
The breakdown of late autumn.
The cold rest of a Vermont winter.
And then, again, the spring.

And youth again,
that strange renewing that comes with no schedule but Gods’
as you wait for the harvesting,
and the planting anew.

About this poem

All this surgery and recovery has taught me a bit about age, and the helplessness when the parts just don’t work and everything hurts. I have gained a new empathy.

I will get better. I am getting better. But some lessons you never forget, and the grace of all the second chances I have been given flood me every day. I feel old physically, but younger still, spiritually.

I have a weakness for postcards from the fifties and early sixties. They have a slightly garish technicolor hue to them. This picture was taken down the road in Pawlet, VT, but I admit to a little photoshop to get that old post card hue. It fit my mood.

Tom