Vaughn Fritts, Nature Poet

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The End of Summer

On Losing a Friend

The Gardener

The Last Dahlia

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The End of Summer

What held the ripe green apple to the stem,
and held the clustered acorns to the oak,
grew old and weary, till at last it broke
and Fall began to drum a requiem.
The weeping willow tore her tattered hem
and shed gold tears when colder winds awoke
to sing the Agnus Dei. Cricket-croak
and locust-song were counterpoint to them.
And now, the owl unfurls its dappled wings
and soars below the moon. Beneath a leaf,
a cautious but ambitious rodent gains
the confidence to venture out, which brings
about catastrophe, albeit brief,
as autumn picks through summer's sere remains.

© Copyright 2001 Vaughn Fritts

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On Losing a Friend

Today, I feel, as on that autumn day
I stood, confused and at a loss for words,
watching, against a sky of endless grey,
the aimless flight of disenfranchised birds.
My tree, my rest and refuge from the world,
where I had carved in bark my V for Vaughn
and in whose sturdy branches I lay curled
to dream for hours on summer days, was gone.
All that remained around the weeping stump
were sawdust curls among the ivy vines,
my broken branches tangled in a clump
(their leaves like golden spades and valentines)
and fresh cut logs stacked neatly in a row.
I turned away, but had no place to go.

The Gardener

There's rhyme and reason to this plot of land,
where fences give me freedom to control
my efflorescence, trimmed and edged by hand.
See how the dogwood blushes on the knoll,
while rosebuds bleed beside the garden gate?
These grew like seedlings planted in my soul
until I felt a need to liberate
that landscape burgeoning behind my eyes.
But dreams like these, which move me to create,
though bright as bushes filled with butterflies,
can't, in themselves, conceive a plan or toil
beneath the sun to make a garden rise.
Each trellised vine, each captive quatrefoil
will find fruition here in fertile soil.

© Copyright 2001 Vaughn Fritts

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The Last Dahlia

Still beautiful, surviving in the cold,
though smaller now, by half, than August's bloom,
she keeps, defiantly, her stubborn hold,
a summer bride awaiting winter's groom.

Her veil, arrayed in lavender florets
of involuted petals, frames a face
resolved to rush headlong, with no regrets,
into a stringent season's cold embrace.

How could she love a bluebeard's bitter breath,
or find contentment in that barren house
of empty corridors that smell of death?
Why would she share her bed with such a spouse?

Now, holding on too long, her season done,
she gives herself to him: Oblivion.

© Copyright 2001 Vaughn Fritts

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