Have you taken a deep breath today? Welcome to Well-Versed, WNUR News’s poetry segment, where you’ll hear timely poetry readings to help you relax, reflect, and reconnect. Guys, fall is finally here! The view outside my window is changing day by day, and I wore a jacket for the first time last week. Today, I wanted to share some poems I love about this time of year, and I hope they’ll make you appreciate the changing weather a little more.
This first poem is by Thomas McGrath, who lived from 1916-1990. He was a prolific poet and screenwriter from Ransom County, North Dakota. He began his poetic career writing reviews and poems for leftist publications, while also working as a labor organizer. This is “Beyond the Red River”.
Beyond the Red River
The birds have flown their summer skies to the south,
And the flower-money is drying in the banks of bent grass
Which the bumble bee has abandoned. We wait for a winter lion,
Body of ice-crystals and sombrero of dead leaves.
A month ago, from the salt engines of the sea,
A machinery of early storms rolled toward the holiday houses
Where summer still dozed in the pool-side chairs, sipping
An aging whiskey of distances and departures.
Now the long freight of autumn goes smoking out of the land.
My possibles are all packed up, but still I do not leave.
I am happy enough here, where Dakota drifts wild in the universe,
Where the prairie is starting to shake in the surf of the winter dark.
This next poem is by Connie Leung, a poet who has been incarcerated since the age of 17. Through the Bedford Hills College program, she graduated from Marymount Manhattan College. This is “Autumn in Prison”.
Autumn in Prison
In memory of John Fowle
these leaves are not from in here
they are nothing like the towering pine
that prickles crevices into my sky with its
decaying and sullen branches
these leaves are robust & hearty still
sneaking their way onto a stage
of concrete like renegade
prima donnas at burlesque
they dance and flicker
bare glimpses of saffron & sepia
blow kisses from lips a tint of rouge
i am certain
no man can recreate
these leaves must be
the ones you saw each day
as you sat close by painting
they huddled together didn’t they
and danced harmoniously
as they fanned rainbows into your sky
i create a story in my mind of how
you must’ve smiled and pressed
those rose-kissed cheeks toward your eyes
but your leaves are changing in here
as all the fallen do
i watch as one little ballerina races by
unable to keep pace
she collides into a steel wall
half her body in my company
half her body reaching for you
her slippers tear in the struggle
i whisper to her you’re still beautiful
and tell her you should go
she twirls her head blushing
then exposes her drying heart toward me
she waits for me to come for her
she waits for us
to save each other
Thank you so much for listening to Well-Versed! I hope you spend some time looking at the trees today.
For WNUR News, this has been Iliana Demas.
