Waning Autumnal

I sit beside the cellar of a farm long since gone
Granite turning from hole back to rock and earth
Property donated, farmers’ names forgotten
Orchards left to grow over and run wild,
Apples lying fallow on the ground for deer that don’t know they are invited
How many such places exist, forgotten, waiting to be fallen in to?

My grandpa taught me how to “tell the weather”
Watch the poplars as the leaves turn over-silver
Cast iron clouds move in and the air smells sweet
Electric and alive
Sit on the porch and wait for the rain to come

Have you ever seen it rain color?
Or gust wishes?
The day lends itself to optimism.

As the lake reflects the sunlight, bringing colors down to earth
The trees pick up the colors dear and hoist them to the sky
Maples scarlet and orange- raspberries, pumpkins, squash
Birches yellow- corn
Golden leaves are black eyed susans
The pine and spruce hold the green for us so we can start again next year



The trees gather up all of their most vibrant colors
holding them up in hope and offering for next year
Orange of pumpkins and squash
Red strawberries and roses
Yellow corn and black-eyed susans
Await rebirth in our mind's eye and rich earth




Birches stretch out
their branches like long bony fingers,
announcing their new nakedness
to autumn's gun-metal
grey skies





Fall rushes in like a
death rally
hot, red, and flush
a moment of brilliant
clarity
false hope fleeting

before you blink and
it's gone
stark and grey





I began my day grousing that I was up before the dawn.
Slate blue sky, dark and clouded, greets my start.
But as I round the corner, ripe peach bursts over
the mountains, filling the sky from horizon to infinity.
Sun unseen but omnipresent through charcoal yields
a rainbow at dawn.




The barn stood for 200 years on the same site, only to be torn down because of taxes, and shipped to a place called Sun Valley, where the sun is entirely different from the rays that had weathered that barn over its time. “But we’re preserving a bit of New England!” they say. No, actually, you’re simply now moving a whole bunch of wood.

Fear of Commitment

For more than three years I have avoided the blog culture, fearing that I would start this online conversation and then allow it to languish like those silly digital pets that can "die" if you don't feed them and play with them, then causing me to be overwhelmed by latent (really latent, like another lifetime) Catholic guilt. But alas, in a fit of procrastination, I entered the digital world, cautiously, looking over one shoulder for the naysayer me, and here I am.

About the title: Censorship Causes Blindness is one of the slogans for the American Library Association's campaign against Banned Books. I think it reflects why I teach, how I think, what the world could be if we all were honest with each other and ourselves. If we could see past our ignorance, perhaps we could stumble our way toward enlightenment.

My kids (63 8th graders) start The Giver tomorrow, one of the most frequently challenged or banned books in the United States, but also a book that I consider to be one of the most important in the line of "new" classics. Handing kids this book is one small way I try to change the world: I create questioners. Even if only one reads this book, often in one sitting, voraciously, after I told them not to read ahead (they always do) and then questions, "What about our world?" I have done my job.

So here is my line in the sand, a challenge to myself to not abandon this bit of literary vanity, in an effort to write something that is worth reading.