Journey
Emma Diaz Pease
Emerald leaves turn tired,
And morph into amber.
Then rose paints away the dark blue of night
And dew drops
Dribble upon each blade of grass or
rock of moist most.
As the sun rises
For this
Late summer dawn,
The winds change
And the bond between
Hushed bark and drowsing leaf
Breaks.
Mauve twine snaps
With the recognizable scissors of silver
And the other end falls.
A whispering gale awakes.
The soulful trees shake,
Tremble, quake
With the caress of the awakened squall.
And the world holds its breath,
As the summer turns to fall,
As the undeclared sky flutters with
a million bits of sparkling
amber–cinders of willing arbor.
Beginning and end float to the call of a
Small creak.
A thousand boats
Leaving their homes
On a different journey.
Kakis are good
But don’t try the pine cones
By Emma Diaz Pease
Is what my mother once said
During one of our late summer dinners.
When the sky would turn a
Blazing orange
And the forest of our yard would deepen
Into a dark pine green…
When cicadas would slow their drone
To something like the neverending sound of the
A far away raging sea…
When the khakis and figs would turn ripe,
The quick mice, and cunning opossums
Would come at night,
And ravage the delicacies whole.
But that was when we
Had enough.
That was when I
Had a mother
That would tell me to save the
Khakis for others.
Or collect the pine
Cones.
There was always enough
With her.
But she left last year when
The figs got ripe.
We’re still doing the late summer
Dinner this year.
And as I bite into the first khaki
And the horizon cries clouds of
Pinks and red
The fruit in my mouth tastes bittersweet
And I have to look down
To check that it isn’t a pine cone
