POET'S CORNER by Jeff Hartzer
#017: October, 2005

Chile Winds

October first 
brought the sound of geese
fifty four 
in flying vee... 

With the hot air balloons gone to bed, the World Series wrapped up, and Hurricane Season done with, we can now get onto the true business of Autumn...raking leaves and preparing for our most expensive winter heating bill E-V-E-R. With colorful leaves along the Bosque, scary Kookooee ablaze, Halloween pumpkins with candy galore, and the many traditions of All Hallow’s Eve and the Day of the Dead; our freezers now filled with the latest chile harvest and with that smell of pinon and juniper smoke in the air...truly, this is one of the finest months to be alive and well in our Enchanted Land.

Here in the Poet’s Corner this month, I begin with a short poem I wrote in tribute to the flight of geese and I leave you with a poem I wrote in tribute to our individual life journeys.

Halfway up the hill

A giant hawk screams warning; I whistle back...
then the dog barks and then that yellow Volkswagen
lies dead in the woods...right there...
It happens that way...on Sundays...out walking with God.

Then that Volkswagen lies smashed and dead...
with papers scattered across the straw and windshields blasted away.
And I sit, where it sits,
still as death...
While my dog walks close and sniffs and barks
and the sun warms my back
on an October Sunday,
when leaves are crimson...
More bright than the dead.

My life is filled with symbols and signs
like that dream I had of thumbs and fingers.
Mimi says I need to be touched...
Yes, I say.
Touch me, all you people
Touch me, and my heart will shatter open...
like this broken windshield lying so very still;
And so very right with the world...

And how in the hell did this stolen heart of a Volkswagen
get up this hill , halfway...to this place here,
to be dumped lifeless in the woods?

And what's in it for me? Where is the sign?
What does it all mean?
And where did that giant hawk go?

Jeff Hartzer copyright 2005