My Autumn Leaves, poem by Bruce Weigl

MY AUTUMN LEAVES
by Bruce Weigl

I watch the woods for deer as if I’m armed.
I watch the woods for deer who never come.
I know the hes and shes in autumn
rendezvous in orchards stained with fallen
apples’ scent. I drive my car this way to work
so I may let the crows in corn believe
it’s me their caws are meant to warn,
and snakes who turn in warm and secret caves

they know me too. They know the boy
who lives inside me still won’t go away.
The deer are ghosts who slip between the light
through trees, so you may only hear the snap
of branches in the thicket beyond hope.
I watch the woods for deer, as if I’m armed.

 Photo by Honorable and Bold. 

“My Autumn Leaves” is found in My Unraveling Strangeness, Bruce Weigl’s 2002 poetry collection from Grove Press. Find the book at Amazon.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Bruce Weigl entered the U.S. Army at age 18 and served in Vietnam for one year, beginning in December 1967. He was awarded the Bronze Star and returned to his hometown of Lorain, Ohio. He earned his BA at Oberlin College, his MA at the University of New Hampshire, and his PhD at the University of Utah. Weigl is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry, including The Unraveling Strangeness (2002), Archeology of the Circle: New and Selected Poems (1999), and After the Others (1999). Weigl has won the Robert Creeley Award, the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, the Paterson Poetry Prize, the Poet’s Prize from the Academy of American Poets, the Cleveland Arts Prize, and two Pushcart Prizes. Song of Napalm (1998) was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. He has also been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Yaddo Foundation. His latest work, Among Elms in Ambush, will be released on September 14, 2021.

My Autumn Leaves, poem by Bruce Weigl

MY AUTUMN LEAVES
by Bruce Weigl

I watch the woods for deer as if I’m armed.
I watch the woods for deer who never come.
I know the hes and shes in autumn
rendezvous in orchards stained with fallen
apples’ scent. I drive my car this way to work
so I may let the crows in corn believe
it’s me their caws are meant to warn,
and snakes who turn in warm and secret caves
 
they know me too. They know the boy
who lives inside me still won’t go away.
The deer are ghosts who slip between the light
through trees, so you may only hear the snap
of branches in the thicket beyond hope.
I watch the woods for deer, as if I’m armed. 

 Photo: Mark P. Jones, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

“My Autumn Leaves” is found in My Unraveling Strangeness, Bruce Weigl’s 2002 poetry collection from Grove Press. Find the book at Amazon.com.

Bargain Books a Boon to This Blogger

Yesterday, I took a walk and wandered into one of the OUT OF THE CLOSET thrift stores that brighten the world here in Southern California. This is my favorite place to look for books — because the people who contribute have great taste in literature and the prices are the low, low, lowest anywhere.

My three finds on Tuesday, March 5, 2013, we among the best I’ve ever hit. Is this the way people who play slot machines feel when three cherries appear? I paid just $1 for each of these books — and all were in beautiful condition.

Without further ado, here they are (along with a passage from each)…

“The address that Patrolman Mancuso was looking for was the tiniest structure on the block, aside from the carports, a Lilliput of the eighties. A frozen banana tree, brown and stricken, languished against the front of the porch, the tree preparing to collapse as the iron fence had done long ago. Near the dead tree there was a slight mount of earth and a leaning Celtic cross cut from plywood. The 1946 Plymouth was parked in the front yard, its bumper pressed against the porch, its taillights blocking the brick sidewalk. But, except for the Plymouth and the weathered cross and the mummified banana tree, the tiny yard was completely bare. There were no shrubs. There was no grass. And no birds sang.” From the novel A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES by John Kennedy Toole, first published by Grove Press in 1980 (and winner of a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for the author).

THE GROVE PRESS READER 1951-2001, edited by S.E. Gontarski, also features work by Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett, Marguerite Duras, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Jean Genet, D.H. Lawrence, Harold Pinter, and scores of other leading authors of this half-century in international arts and letters.

The cover blurb of THE AMERICAN NIGHT: The Writings of Jim Morrison, Volume 2 reads: “A literary last testament from rock’s poet of the damned.” (Is that really a sales pitch?) As most breathing humans (and some animals) know, Jim Morrison (1943-1971) was the driving force of the seminal 1960s band, The Doors.

AN AMERICAN PRAYER (Excerpt)

by Jim Morrison

Do you know the warm progress

under the stars?

Do you know we exist?

Have you forgotten the keys to the Kingdom?

Have you been born yet

& are you alive? 

Let’s reinvent the gods, all the myths

of the ages

Celebrate symbols from deep elder forests

[Have you forgotten the lessons

of the ancient war]

And, finally, one of my all-time favorite books — I’ve given away probably 10 copies of ON WRITING by Stephen King and always snap up a copy when I find one.

Here are some words of wisdom from the writing wizard: “I believe that plotting and the spontaneity of real creation aren’t compatible…my basic belief about the making of stories is that they pretty much make themselves. The job of the writer is to give them a place to grow (and transcribe them, of course)…stories are found things, like fossils in the ground…stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world. The writer’s job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as possible.”

My Autumn Leaves, Poem by Bruce Weigl

MY AUTUMN LEAVES

Poem by Bruce Weigl

I watch the woods for deer as if I’m armed.

I watch the woods for deer who never come.

I know the hes and shes in autumn

rendezvous in orchards stained with fallen

apples’ scent. I drive my car this way to work

so I may let the crows in corn believe

it’s me their caws are meant to warn,

and snakes who turn in warm and secret caves

 

they know me too. They know the boy

who lives inside me still won’t go away.

The deer are ghosts who slip between the light

through trees, so you may only hear the snap

of branches in the thicket beyond hope.

I watch the woods for deer, as if I’m armed. 

Photo: Mark P. Jones, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

###

“My Autumn Leaves” is found in My Unraveling Strangeness, Bruce Weigl’s 2002 poetry collection from Grove Press. Find the book at Amazon.com.