Come We Now

Don’t Carry It All
–Decemberists

Here we come to a turning of the season
Witness to the arc towards the sun
The neighbors blessed burden within reason
Becomes a burden borne of all in one
And nobody, nobody knows
Let the yoke fall from our shoulders
Don’t carry it all don’t carry it all
We are all our hands in holders
But meet this bold and brilliant sun
But this I swear to all
A monument to build beneath the arbors
Upon a cliff that towers towards the trees
But every vessel pitching hard to starboard
Lay it’s head on summer’s freckled knees
And nobody, nobody knows
Let the yoke fall from our shoulders
Don’t carry it all don’t carry it all
We are all our hands in holders
Beneath this bold and brilliant sun
This I swear to all, this I swear to all
And there a wreath of trillium and ivy
Laid upon the body of the boy
Lazy will the long come from it’s hiding
Return his quiet certitude to the soil
So raise a glass to turnings of the season
And watch it as it arcs towards the sun
And you must bear your neighbors burden within reason
And your labors will be borne when all is done, and nobody nobody knows
Let the yoke fall from our shoulders
Don’t carry it all don’t carry it all
We are all our hands in holders
Beneath this bold and brilliant sun

Come We Now

“Here we come to a turning of the season,
Witness to the arc toward the sun…”
–Decemberists

Come we now to the turning of the season,
Beneath the sun’s arc as it falls,
Pausing as we reckon the course we will be keeping.
In our ears the sound of wind as it plays around us all;
We recognize the darkness without weeping.

Numbing fog’s heatless light bears a dark cold day of dying;
Under frost, now drawn and still, what’s done is done, and stopped,
But not to understand these shapes in ice as ever-keeping.
Into moving air, limb-shaken, the last brown fritillaries drop,
Fluttering they search for places where they must stay;
Cloud gaps appear in which to stand a moment, warming;
Faces turn southward toward the setting of the season’s day.
The long darkness’ fast approach bespeaks of distant dawn, awhile breaking.

(Beneath the flaming overstory, soft ground
And the green remainders lingering
Tell of someone someday sitting down
Gold-lit among everything again ice-letting.)