THE FALLEN LEAF

The Fallen Leaf

The dreams of old soldiers
Grow forever in waves and waves
Of cemetery grass(Basho)

A pelican soars over and on over
The dunes, where I follow, wandering
Up from the tide that splashes my feet,
And on through the whipping grass,
As I step slowly into the garden

Of upright, marbled stones, rising
Through waves of fog among
Multitudes of rows, and for a time,
I read every name until the dusk
Fades away the letters and stones

And sculptured memories that stand
In ghostly fog crawling round my legs,
As I hear a chorus of muffled voices
Whispering a linguistic mix of sounds
In wind-gusts, or was it Einstein’s voice

Tuning into my ear worm, reminding
Me what we call “history,” while a certainty
For the departed, is an grand illusion
For the living, and all we will know
Of this metaphysical phenomena

We call “space and time” is the sea-
Flow present of what we sense
In these minutes of coagulating dusk,
Darkness and fog with a dangerous sea
Swirling and whirling near me, as I

Wander on along a dark and windy
Normandy coast, where I gaze at stars
Marking the dark ocean sky as I
Refuse to imagine the hell storm that
Blew through here in June 1944.

TWO

I wander, on, looking back
At human existence as an odd
Manifestation of a complex fiction
Of accidental cause and effect,
That predestines hard edges

Of bone, ground, and stone, as
The great Descartes wondered—
Are we but flesh and blood robots,
Living out a scenario written by
Some malevolent will? Are we just

Cosmic puppets controlled by alien
Or perhaps mischievous forces? Such
Questions stir my mind, as I turn toward
The restless gusts of wind, snatching
My hair toward the clouds rolling, roiling

Round a waning, and warped moon,
Yet its spotlight guides my path up
Crumbling stairs that open into a passage
Through the fog and smog, and I stand
Before a marble crypt, looking ancient

As Caesar’s Gaul, but the decrepit
Structure gleams bone-bright under
Moonlight. Suddenly, I visualize a rusting,
Door standing ajar with a broken chain
And lying there on the floor, brittle remains

Of autumn, a dry maple leaf, which beckons
Me to pick it up, as my flying ear worm
Soars to whisper, “The doorway opens to
A fallen leaf—welcome to the history of grief.”

The White Night

Can’t sleep, can’t sleep, damn,
I’m cursing the scratching branch
And above—scratching against

My rental car roof sometime in the lost
Hours of night with sudden gusts of chilly,
Coastal wind that keep my brain

Awake, as I repeat “This is the ‘la
Nuit blanche, la nuit blanche.’” This
Is what I’ve heard so much about.

Now somewhere between Deauville
And Mont Saint-Michel, I’m still blank-
As-a-page awake even as the 2 a.m.

Church bell sounds and resounds,
In cold, amber air and light of the parking
Lot, while keeping my eyes covered

With my ragged TB baseball cap, there
Prone as rolled carpet in the back seat
Of the Citroen SUV, I’m illegally

Parked at a hotel so expensive that
I preferred to demure and not check in
With either dollars, Euros, or credit,

When finally, the church bell strikes
Once, strikes twice—bong-ing bong-ing,
Ringing in F sharp, I have to sit up

And decide: Either I drive on down
The highway to I’m-not-sure-where,
and to where-I’ve-never-been before,

Or I take clandestine and evasive action,
So grasping my Swiss Army knife tight
In hand I move slowly, clandestinely

As a night cat—stepping outside,
Reaching up to trim off the offending
Branch, but feeling guilty to accuse

The offending messenger—the living
Branch instead of the true villain,
The gusty, coastal wind, and as it’s said

Some French folks said in war time, when,
Trying to sleep near the Normandy
Coast, with those dangerous, allied

Bombing runs, “When the white fires
Of hell fell from the sky, the night turned
Into the naked flame of ‘La nuit blanche.’”

Reed Venrick is a writer who lives in the Florida Key islands, usually writing poems with travel, culture, or nature themes. BTW, thanks for publishing my poems in 2020.