The Magical Qualities of Life

Not an ordinary post, but one about the way poetry intrudes when you least expect it.  Sometimes my  own words, sometimes the words of others, but always images, sounds, feelings, colors, light, darkness, always working their way around my perceptions.  Like an artist working a canvas because something just isn't yet right, my words can be the same way.  The words of others sometimes inspire, sometimes scold, sometimes goad me.

Sometimes a friend will say something that brings many wonderful, enticing images to mind.
For instance, a tweet from friend earlier asking if dead leaves really HAVE to make that awful scratchy, scuttling sound when they blow down the street.
I say they do, for they speak of the memories of Spring now lost, of the ravages of Winter still here, of the glorious ghosts of Autumn color.

Dead Leaves
By C.K. Armistead
March 2014

Down the street,
The wind accompanies
The army of small victims
Scuttling and scraping their way
Beside us,
Following behind us,
Making us look over our shoulders
To see WHAT is following,
Though we really don't WANT to know.
It's the ghosts of Spring's broken promises
The melancholy memories of Summer sun,
The lost glory of Autumn's colors,
The ghostly garments of trees
Shed, and taken up by who knows what,
Whispering to us on the wind,
To taunt us even now, at Winter's end
With the knowledge of mortality.

No Halloween tale could ever be complete without the atmospheric scuttling of dry leaves underfoot and along the street.  Their sound so evocative of fall  and desolation, and reminding us of the wind's mercurial and teasing presence.

The daily verses are still being written.  Often they are drivel, just for fun. Now and then one I really like shows up, and there has been a couple that are even related to each other. 
This is short, but it is what was begging to be written tonight.
Peace.