Three Autumn Poems by Deanna Kingel

Piedmont Autumn

A scent in the air
Freely wafting
No longer smothered under a blanket of humidity and labor’s sweat.
It’s still hot.

Long days of summer’s white hot light
Shift to shorter days of dawn and dusk

The scent haunts.
Rolls of hay
Bales of straw
Stubbled fields of corn
Pumpkins simmer in the field
The lonely watermelon begs for more time, clings, tenacious, to its withered umbilical vine, tethered forever to the season.

Needles once supple and green, drop like rain into rusty heaps
Dry and brittle under the tall pines that give life to the Piedmont.
Leaves, months ago buds of youthful anticipation
Sway, wrinkled and dry, a final tango with summer
Until a traitorous wind out of the North cuts in.

Box turtles burrow deep beneath the privet.
Monarchs and migrants all gone.
The Piedmont is quiet.
Waiting
To be stirred by the cold hand of winter.

Ninety Minutes, Nine Days

Ninety minutes ago I left my home
Winding and curving my descent to I-40 Eastbound where I’ll spend much of the day
Tires on the pavement, already monotonous
Passing Asheville I glimpse a parting view of our mountains
Deep purple silhouette
From every ridge white wisps of sprite-like cloud reach upward
Absorbed into the new day

Rain clouds torn apart reveal ragged patches of blue
Like a lacy shawl over the chilly shoulders of the Blue Ridge.
I feel the magnetic tug.
This vision will be mine nine hours from now when I unpack my car
The magnetic pull will nudge every day I am away.

Nine days from now in late afternoon
I will pass this place again on I-40 Westbound
Passing Asheville my first glimpse of our mountains
I’ll know that in my absence fall arrived in full
The silhouette painted crimson red
Hickory and Poplar pin gold brooches to the breast of our mountain.

She is stunning.
The magnet pulls from the core of the mountain to the inner core of me
Tires on the pavement hum
Near breathless with anticipation
Winding, curving my ascent begins
Back up to the plateau I call home
Hidden deep in the Blue Ridge

Morning Mist in the Gap

I pass Cumberland Gap early in the day
I hear the haints say s-stay s-stay
I see them rise into the air
Thin wisps of fingers
Come, come if you dare

I see Dan’l Boone hiking the ridge
Whistling a tune
Leading pioneers
Unaware of doom

Women, children, adventurous men
Haints in white gauzy attire
Walking, creeping, crawling, falling
Down into the ridge as they tire

Cherokee haints pass slow in grief
Translucent hands raised
In disbelief
Kneeling, praying, dying, along the clouded ridge
Knowing not what’s across that bridge.

The sun rises warm and releases the haints
To stillness and silence from their secret place
To return in the night and hide in dark
Until daybreak when they wander again

Deanna K. Klingel, Author

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