This Once

Sun turning day
This once
In the year
Unpicked persimmons
High in the tree
Ripening to translucence
Each its own miniature sun
Against cold sky

Robins chattering
In the canopy, pecking away
At the tight-skinned succulent globes
Even as we gather from below
With our long pole.

With sun dying
Forest, that swung its
Photon-catchers
Through the blue all day
Stands still, black figures
Chanting the silence
That frames
Low Jupiter and Saturn
In conjunction

One solstice star
This once
In some 800 years
As precious in its rarity
As each breath
I take.

21
XII
20

Cedar Wings Cottage
Moon waxing
Sky clear and hazy
Between storms

Since the Halloween Full Moon of October we have been watching bright Jupiter & Saturn appear in the western sky after sunset, day after day becoming closer to each other and closer to the sun, as the moon cycled twice through its phases and chased its tail two times along the ecliptic — all messengers of the great cycling. Persimmon trees are also messengers, its fruits each autumn ripening as large orange-red globes clustered in the tree tops bare of leaves, an ornamented ‘Christmas tree’ striking for its abundant harvest offered in the gathering cold and darkness of the year. This once, there was the conjunction of tree and planet, as we gathered the last fruits from a neighbor’s tree and with darkness walked from the house to a place where low Jupiter and Saturn appearing as one, sparkling between the forest silhouette of tree branches.