Revelation

Fall is a time of renewal
before things die:
beds cleared, weeds pulled,
seeds collected.
I sit and sort what I remember.

I remember storms,
scarlet fever and German measles,
war reports at night
behind closed blackout curtains.

My father stood in front of the dial,
the only light.
Still, the warden knocked
and gave warning.
Even then I thought him officious.

My father was a preacher,
so would preach,
but never of fire and brimstone.
He preferred to teach.

My uncle watched for signs of the end,
worked out several specious patterns
he reported
with a certain glee.

I remember snow,
how it blotted out mud and life's clutter,
how wind in dry cornstalks would mutter
dry quiet talk
of frost, fields frozen over forever:

an expanse of death
where in winter alone I would walk,
shocks stacked in fields,
some leaning,
others down on their sides.

Dry grasses would blow and hiss.
Thus, I learned to shudder
and, surely, not only from cold
and the need to piss,

but from prophesies, omens and scriptures;
talk overheard
about the end of the world,
the Holy Land made rubble.

Leaves, before they fell,
hung on to turn scarlet and yellow,
long enough to tell
what to me was a quite different story:
a tale of life, a promise of growth and renewal,
the dead reborn.

I preferred the message of the trees..