SageGreenJournal.org
voices out of the West, mostly poetry, personal to planetary
Autumn Noelle Hall
Green Mountain Falls, Colorado
two linked series by
Autumn Noelle Hall
Autumn Noelle Hall lives in a cabin in Green Mountain Falls, Colorado, with her husband, two daughters, and one rapskallion Australian Shepherd. A Pikes Peak Arts Council nominee for Page Poet of the Year, Autumn is honored to have her work included in many fine Asian Short Form publications, both at home and abroad. She is especially grateful to you, Readers, for bringing her words to life.
Following the Gunnison
Zhuangzi’s road sign:
Icy Conditions
May Exist
Kodak 3200
its grain the same
as Cimmaron snow
the Gunnison
Ansel Adam’s Zone 5
grey-card grey
naked landscape
chaparral blushing
with the cold
reeling in the wind
ice fishermen summon
Kokanee salmon
the citrine flash
of an osprey’s eye
before she dives
that splash of blue
sky stones skipping across
the Curecanti
Ursa Major
musket fire
the crack of all three 4x4’s
at 3 a.m.
our twelve-foot deck rail yields
to a cinnamon bear
no match
for his crescent claw’s
pick-pick-picking
the shed door’s panel peels
like a Chiquita sticker
on tippy-toes
he stretches for the spruce’s
suet feeder
its chain links, Perseids
raining down on the garden
I know
the Universal Tongue:
it is hunger
the bear’s stomach speaks to mine
and I understand its growl
Buddha Bear
his great moon face rising
amber-eyed
to offer his suet cake
to an August sky
a beautiful thing
It is a beautiful thing to wake
in the dark chill of October
and go out into it
where a crescent moon
and two stars appear both ahead
and in the rear view mirror
before you even leave home
to sit on the floor with it
kneecap to kneecap
inhaling the dark clarinet
of your body
only the breath of the tires
the train’s long choo-choo
searching in the rubble of itself
your pounding throat, a bratty knee
a molecule of coffee still clinging
to the root of your tongue
your eyelids lower now
and in front of you wrapped shoulders
of a robe folded with her empty hands
that her, that you, that teacher
with the one word lesson