Harvest

Here I go, taking another prompt from Cafe Writing, this time option 2. I don't claim that this is particularly good stuff I'm writing, but it helped me get something out on paper. No-Prize to the first person who can identify the formal constraint I placed upon myself in this work of free verse. I could probably re-write without it and get a better poem, but if I hadn't done it in the first place I probably wouldn't have stumbled on most of the lines that I like, so there's some value there, I think.

The prompt was to write a poem about gathering together or scattering abroad, using for inspiration the following quotation by Edwin Way Teale:

"For man, autumn is a time of harvest, of gathering together. For nature, it is a time of sowing, of scattering abroad."

For a moment, think of the season beneath the rustling social fabric, to the bared,
     goose-pimpled flesh of the Earth;

Man: imagine him not in his own context, but in nature’s;

Autumn not as football games and world series and leaf-blowers and costumes and candy.

Is it possible for you to imagine what lies deeper?

A moment of your

Time, a moment of your imagination. Consider:

Of all the festivals of ancient humanity, buried in our genes and memes,

Harvest is deepest.

Of course, it is only as old, really, as agriculture, but

Gathering as it does something of an even older hunter-gatherer tradition

Together with the twining roots of civilization, it is as deep and rich as the best soil,

For Harvest is where Humanity and

Nature entwine mostly closely like sometimes-lovers. Or, anyway, where they did.

It was, 100 years ago, a third of the country who farmed; 200 years ago, 90%. Today the number

Is less than 3%.

A paltry few, and harvest festivals speak to us less as we speak to Nature hardly at all, estranged lovers.

Time was, we felt the season’s celebration in our pulses, in our bones, in our loins, and in Nature's.

Of what essential of the season could we be oblivious?

Sowing with our hands and feet, legs, arms, chests, our hearts and minds, and reaping the same.

Of what, today, are we even aware of this, when we see not our farmers, when we are not our farmers,
     when we know not our farmers,

Scattering them far and wide across the landscape? Seek them

Abroad, in the far country called the past, and in that other distant land, our future.

Thursday Threesome on Friday, which is fine, cause it's food-friendly

Two posts in one week with ideas borrowed from CafeWriting.

Onesome- Coffee: Do you drink coffee? If so, do you ask for brewed or do you prefer the fancy espresso drinks? What’s your flavor?

I'm not a big coffee drinker, but I have fallen in love with our local coffee shop's Caramel Macchiato. With three shots of espresso instead of the regular two, it's my Sunday morning caffeine treat, but I had a regular two-shotter today because I had a free one coming thanks to my school's Faculty & Staff Association. 

Twosome- Tea: Do you drink tea? Hot or iced? Regular, herbal or flavored?

I drink more tea than coffee, almost exclusively green tea, plain. I like it either hot or iced with lemon juice added. I've also started drinking yerba mate and like that too. Sometimes I'll make a yerba/green hybrid, cause that's how I roll.

Threesome- Or Me? Ok, not really me! Seriously, what’s your favorite beverage? Alcoholic or non, healthy or not?

My favorite guilty pleasure drink is Cream Soda, but I pretty much never drink it now. Do smoothies count as drinks? I love either a homemade blueberry protein smoothie or anything at Jamba Juice or Orange Julius or wherever (though I'm pretty sure homemade is better for me).

CafeWriting: Seven Things

This prompt comes from CafeWriting by way of MissMeliss: "Give me seven of your favorite things about Autumn." I think I'd like to pick up some of the other prompts before the month is over, but this seemed like an easy place to start.

1. Even though the modern food reality is one where we can eat anything we want whenever we want, the autumnal foods like pumpkin and apples have a particular appeal around this time, like there's something coded in our genes that loves these foods more when the leaves are changing color, when the air is getting crisp, and when these foods are actually in season. I love pumpkin pies, pumpkin cakes, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin bread, and especially pumpkin rolls. I love apple cider, apple pies, and especially apple crisp.

2. I love being reminded of John Keats this time of year, particularly his poem "To Autumn," which I had to memorize as an undergrad. Broad swatches of it have, evidently, been harvested from my mind, leaving only stubble, but that just means I have to look it up. Most of the first stanza is still there, and I love the lines "or by a cyder press, with patient look, / Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours" (yeah, I had to look it up) and "Where are the songs of spring? Aye, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too." (No, not that one)

3. Football season. It's about as arbitrary and about as rational as believing the religion you grew up with, but I love football. I love the sport, I love cheering for my teams, and fall is the time of new beginnings. I don't get too over-the-top about my fandom, but I love football season.

4. I actually like the cool-to-cold weather. Today, even as I enjoyed the warm "Indian Summer" day out at the tennis courts, part of me kind of missed the cold day that was the backdrop for our match last Saturday. Yeah, I know it's weird.

5. Speaking of tennis, the high school tennis season is another of the things I love about autumn. I may have loved the girls tennis season in Rhode Island even more, because I was the coach for my girls instead of one of many coaches for my boys, but one way or another I love it. Last Saturday our boys won their Section. Today, they capped off a two-day victory at the Regional level. On Saturday, they will compete at the Semi-State level, and we feel like our chances are good this year of getting down to the State tournament as a team. What's not to be excited about?

6. Indulging in nostalgia. You saw it there in #5--without even meaning to, I found myself full of wist for a bygone era. Autumn in its natural state has all the metaphorical trappings necessary for a look back over what has been, because it's a time of transition toward The End that winter brings, because it's an analogy for old age.

7. I'm looking forward to the abundance of fallen leaves, because I know that our 21-month-old is going to love them. She's going to have so much fun with big piles of dead leaves--I just know it!

What about you? What are your seven things?