Sing Me Autumn

The sun strikes sparks from the jeweled trees --
their firelight, framed by the window, shows me
the burnished edges of your beauty
(I am not shown the edge of my desire).
Shadows, like tidewater creeping up the shore,
lie snug at your side and in the hollows of your eyes.
Are you sleeping?
Love, autumn lies out the window,
Gaudy as a courtesan in her old age,
Patient as the sea. Is this your kind of wisdom?
I came to you with violets in my hands,
gentle purple as the questions I would ask you,
springtime-tentative. I was so young.
"Spring is too simple," you smiled as you told me,
"Sing me autumn when you fall in love."
The season of trees like roses and wind like dry white wine;
The season of time running out, of resignation.
Show yourself to me. What are you thinking?
Don't you feel this moment like a current, pulling you past reason?
I do,
but you're like a well, deep and static and shadowed.
Show yourself to me. Love me. I love you.
Sing me autumn.

My college friend Jane Thompson wrote this poem more years ago than either of us probably care to count. Although we lost touch, as college friends often do, her poem has stuck in my mind. I went looking for it tonight because I find myself in a relationship that came out of the blue. If she sees this, I hope she'll understand and forgive me for reprinting it here.

I have been the speaker, and now I find myself as the other. Or perhaps both. It is no secret that we see things from a different perspective in our later years. It also shouldn't be a secret that we are still capable of expanding our horizons and learning new things. And sometimes we need to relearn how to do things that have grown stale from lack of use.

Teach me to sing again, and I'll sing you autumn.

A Page from The Past

Yesterday I attacked the growing pile of papers on my desk and a second pile that I'd stashed away a couple of months ago while getting the place ready to host a party. I sorted everything into piles on the living room floor, so I can file it appropriately. One of those piles went into the recycling bag. Whenever I go through this process I'm always surprised at how much I don't really need to keep. And sometimes I find a surprise.

Yesterday's surprise? A sheet of notebook paper torn from one of my spiral notebooks dated October 25, 2011. The heading on the first side read "SFMM Budget" and on the second "SFMM Questions". Saint Francis something Ministries. I think the second M might have been Mutual. There in front of me sat the initial framework for one of the ideas we tried to get off the ground at Grace Episcopal Church Norwalk. Several times over the past six years we tried to find creative ways to make use of our property and building. Saint Francis Ministries became just one more project that never got off the ground a variety of reasons.

Unbegun, unfinished, and failed projects litter my past. I used to look back over them and start to feel like I was a failure. But that's not really the truth of it. Failing something doesn't make a person a failure. Our culture tends to forget that. The question to ask is what did you learn from the experience? Very little scientific or technical progress happens on the first try. In fact, sometimes great discoveries happen by mistake.

Why are we so caught up in the need to not make mistakes? Why is failure something to fear?

Saint Francis Ministries may have died on the drawing board, but who knows when some of those ideas might become an important part of another project.