Names of Fire, By Radiance Angelina Petro

Names of Fire

By

Radiance Angelina Petro

 

 

Autumn opens her notebooks,

sending words sailing into the streets

never once looking back.

She lends them to the wind

where they are bolstered by many

changes of direction.

 

She knows who we are.

She accepts us as we are—cornstalk fiddles

trying to tune our lives into song.

 

She knows we are apprentices

of the sun, and that few have ever seen

pineapple groves or wandered further

into the mountains.

 

Autumn knows our spirits are tightly

wound spools in need of loosening, so

she coaxes us into wide spaces,

into scouring rains and gloom,

through the smoke of burning leaves,

into the growing, early darkness,

where we hastily scrawl her messages

into linsey-woolsey phrases

with hopes we’ll turn, transformed,

and strong, and change our names into fire

against winter’s coming cold.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 


We All Know It’s Going to Happen, By Radiance Angelina Petro

We All Know It’s Going to Happen

By

Radiance Angelina Petro

 

 

Fields of corn, after whispering

all summer, have fallen silent,

the earth begins its long, slow inhale,

the last cricket suddenly stops singing,

the grey heron flies, pushing the past

dreamy months behind with sad, tired wings,

branches and roots withdrawal green

back down into the ensouled earth.

 

We all know it’s going to happen,

we all know the cold is coming.

And what does heaven say to us,

as it blankets the ground with gold?

 

It says:

 

begin building your fires, keep each other warm,

and all through the harsh and difficult winter,

remember: seeds are dreaming of light.

 

 

 

 


 


Including You, by Jennifer Angelina Petro

Including You

By

Jennifer Angelina Petro

 

 

Now that autumn is in full gear

And the air fills the lungs with letting go breaths,

The time has come once again

When the slant of light catches you off guard

And you find yourself weeping

Watching the precipitation from the trees

Vesturing the ground with red and gold.

 

There is nothing you can do.

The allegory of the leaves and change

Has been around as long as trees themselves.

You cannot get around letting go.

 

And there are times letting go turns

Into a flood of things sailing away

Just beyond your reach into a day full of cidered light–

And you can only watch, or try

 

To look away, nevertheless parts of your life

Will be draped on the ground like so many

Torn shards of shifts and shirts

And they will be there waiting for you

To witness their being caught down in unavoidable winds

And you will be left with either becoming

Hard, like a tree whose blood slows to frozen,

 

Or ebullient like a flower girl at a wedding, tossing

Rose petals along the aisle where death

Sits on one side and life on the other,

And your processional of letting go distracts everyone

Momentarily from the marriage about to happen

That will leave everyone, including you,

Searching frantically inside

For the one they used to love.