fall

Autumn again

| Megan
Deschutes River as seen from Bend, Oregon

FTS
(F**ck that Sh!t)

Didn’t we all make promises?
Didn’t we all say yes to caring for each other?

And yet, here we stand with the truth the we
Must be our own golden mean, our own magic

We had nothing to do with the wild universe that
Called us into existence, except for that we have made

A pact, a promise to ourselves, that we 
Would live each day to honor our mitochondria

To uplift our own atoms, to love the Starrdust 
Of others– to kin-keep, to break bread, to

Carry things on our heads and backs, and hearts
And sometimes we have to break the promise

To set the other free, to honor our sovereignty
And perhaps, that is the gift of grief, those

Tendrils of sadness and severed nerves which 
Feel so raw, so new, so in need of protection

Cradle all of us in. The letting go. The setting
Apart, the making into two, and the reconstitution

Of family, of friends, of tables and candlelight 
A twilight override, a play it again, Sam

A journey that has always been one of the heart
That can really only view and visit the other through

A window– soul to soul, sex to sex, human to 
Human, heart to heart, I am that I am

Broken Top, Three Sisters Wilderness, Deschutes National Forest, Oregon (2025).

Falling Forward

It’s not very often I’m privy to an American football game
I prefer soccer, to be honest, or lacrosse, or even rugby
… Any other sport, but I was watching the epic
eternal battle (they call it the holy war) between the red and the blue
And my partner pointed out that one of the quarterbacks

Knew how to perform a ballet for each play, each pass, they
laser-focused their eyes, their body, their entire being
On the intention, the target, even after it left their hands,
yes, they fell forward, toward the play, toward the action
each time, there was not even a hint of indecision in

Their gaze, and it got me to thinking about how life
surely requires this, that we fall forward, that we
look to our most noble intentions with laser-focus
With longing, we’ll be so set on our goal that we’ll
Fall that direction, a ballet for each day

South Sister, Oregon

1.0 Human

a documentary
something about
education and
technology

the second clip
is Ken Jennings
you know, Jeopardy
most-winner who

explains that we have
already been bested by
the technology “gods’
all I can think

is, I’ll never be
ready for this
I’ll always want
bodies, and touch,

and direct instruction
eyes lit by
the sun and that
wondrous gray glob

of matter synapsed
by neurons
I need flesh over
algorithms every

day and the fact
that the bots
spell rhythm
with an i

(lower case) is all
you need to know
about the state of
humanity

I’m slated for the
scrap pile dust
to dust
my god

Harvest

| Megan
Timpanogos, Autumn 2025. Image, my own.

Autumn Pi

Rain on desert ears has the
Nostalgic ring of ancient
Canyons, striae revealed

In layers of eras, reality
Visible over eons where
Water knew its way.

Maybe we’ll wake
Tomorrow, the hot sun
Returned to its high autumn

Zenith, symptom of the
Sickness humans have
Inflicted on everything

Natural around them–
Trees, air, water, animals
Earth’s great oceans all

Poisoned with plastic,
Suffocated, hexed in
Chemicals, save us

From ourselves, our
Hubris and our short-
Sighted nature

Perhaps it is only the
Infinite that keeps me
Sane these days, makes

Me whole, returns me
To my place between
Stars and atomic particles

Sun-burnished sandstone and
Outer space, reminding me
With all our furious machinations

Good and ill, humans have never
Found a round number for Pi,
The circumference of the universe

“My Business is Circumference” Emily Dickinson

Season changing clouds, October 2025. Image, my own.

Plastic

Driving into the ever-early sunset,
East, city streets, wet from rain

moments ago, just passed,
In the waning light

Street lamps begin to wink on
A turkey vulture rides a thermal

High above the traffic light, black, 
Feathery, flighty, I’m surprised

To see such a bird here,
Metropoli, humanity, all scrummed

Together in ever-growing towers
Towns, I look away from the bird

To the arrowed light, dictating a
Turn, the bird takes another

Breeze, it’s moving on to
Other climes, no, there is

No bird. The black specter,
An airborne plastic bag

Autumn in the Wasatch Mountains, 2025. Image, my own.

Paper

A fearless paper
Advocate, let decay the very
Lines I hold so dear

Autumn in the Wasatch Mountains, 2025. Image, my own.

Nothing Like

| Megan
Jupiter and the Pleiades. November. Northern Hemisphere. Image, my own.

Holocene

When the sky lifts, so lapis and milky blue,
Your ocular senses are overwhelmed
The owl calls out, into and through the pencil-
Sketched branches of the cottonwood, then
Down from the neighbor’s roof, as the golden

Sky continues to lift into day, a flat aquamarine
The stark lines of leafless branches against
The air stand beckoning, the promise and
Possibility of new– growth, change, revivification
Glittering diamonds of momentary snow still

Hold winter’s mystery. We do not know what
We will be when the new buds come, but only
What is– this moment, this tree, this
Possibility of everything, anything
Makes our heads spin and swim

Bounded by our humanness, mortality
Consequence, but dazzled by all that is
In us– the roads we’ve wandered, mountains
We’ve scaled, journeys taken and joyed over
And travailed. So much unknown

It still feels like the owl is a good omen
Round white face, deep open amber eyes, wide
And night-visioned, all the flecks and freckled feather
patterns of each wing spread against dawn and dusk
Gifts that portent deaths and lives to come

No Name Saloon. Park City. Image, my own.

Shoes

When your shoes wear
out
run like hell through
tulip fields
Take off
to the mountains
Climb every geologic
Formation
Just to
Prove
You’re alive
You can
You’re not dead… yet
You still want
To spend that
moment with the crickets
under night’s blackness
only the stars
know you’re there

When your shoes are
worn out
you take your daughter to
the gravel pit
and train
your camera lens
on the North Star
tripod so still
to prove
you know
where you are going
even though you
Don’t
you depress
the shutter
let the sky bleed in
for hours
and all you are left with
is time

No time left
But you have those
Shoes
to remind you
to keep you
on your journey
Home–
Through–
Around–
To–
To that time
When the cosmos
smudged its glory
across the lens of
your camera
Film
Still
the most sure sign
that the stars
will fall in
to center
North
Balance
bringing these stars
to you

Autumn Sunset. November 2024. Image, my own.

Question(s)

For all those who question:
Borders
Boundaries
Countries
Alliances
Allies
Friends
Enemies
Economies
Lovers
Children
Fools
Frauds
Race
Place
Faith

I love you

Winter Dandelion. Acrylic on heavyweight cotton paper. Margo Elizabeth Glass. 2024

Night Guide

When Ursa Major dips so low
In the Northern Hemisphere that
Only her two guiding stars are
Visible in the deep of darkness
Black, the seven sisters start to rise
Pleiades, in silent winter’s night as
Cassiopeia, queen, stands out above
The calm chill also pointing her way to our
Closest cosmic simulacrum Andromeda
The stars are there, uncaring and seemingly
Cold, distant even impossibly far, and yet
Known, seen, perceived though the crickets
Haven’t made a sound, the air, nearly
Incorporeal breaths of rest, sleep,
A thousand dreams take flight

Moon, Venus, Timpanogos. Image, Steve Olpin.

Gold

| Megan
Sunset. November. Image, my own.

Beethoven Era

Can you imagine?
Deafness where once was joyous
Sound
Blindness where once filtrations of color-filled light
Ricocheted
Can you imagine?
Losing everything?
If you are human, the guess is, yes
But why must pain catalyze all our understanding? Is it
Truly our only teacher? Isn’t the promise of
Death
Enough to cause us to cling to love, to
Life, to now, maybe not. So maybe we go deaf, blind,
Senseless
Into that good night, into the dark, waiting for
The dawn with breath so small we barely live, sore
Respiration
Reaction, all part of this existence when what we
Thought we wanted most is gone, dematerialized where
Reality is echoed and
Chambered
Oh heart, please, live, please drink the night and day as
A cup of bitter sweetness, lasting but a blink
A piano hammer in the abyss, hammer to string, string
bing, bing, ba-bing, go, boogie,
Be

Gold Nike Shoes. Oakland Museum of California. Image, my own.

Andante

It will never do to keep running
Into yourself if you can’t look up,
Ponder the path of the stars in
The night sky, gaze with longing
And new eyes, on the moon with
Rapture, take in the horizon each
Day and walk into a new lifetime

Light Bulb(s). Image, my own.

Honey

Honey, laughter and green curry are all the #soulfood
I need the joy of bright kaffir lime leaves charged into garlic
and simmered over vegetables, a meal to carry us
through the ages, a gale of fascist hail and bull shit, the
storm of the century is upon us, and all we can do is cook,
sing, and watch the moon as it rises high in the night,
silent observer of her earthly neighbors what a perplexity
what a tragedy, only for a moment, all mixed with joy and
delight, how will we last, how will we survive the fight
join it, gear up, only history knows on this very first calm
snowy night. We hunker in, we knit, we resist like life
depends on it because it does, resistance can be small
nearly silent until the way is clear and that same moon
swims overhead as the path is lit in the quiet dark

Moon. Image, my own.

Orb

In reality
In the body
Black and gray
White and blue
softest aura
Hazing purple
Bold broad
Moon the
Clouds opaled
All around
Stars and sky
Dappled through
and Through
Lord, Bless
Gratitude for
Ohs and glitters
Heavens and Earth
The glory of it
All that lone
Full Moon

Gold. Leaves. Fall. Trees. Image, my own.

Water

| Megan
Pacific Ocean, Oregon Coast. Image, my own.

Creation

creation is like wielding the mystery for a moment
being given the chance to turn the nautilus over in
your hands and awe for a few precious flashes
its precise and perfect structure, wonder at being
given transubstantiational power, snippet of the
infinite, devotional on the unity of all the cosmos
unraveled, a glittering equilibirc instant

Driftwood, grass, trees, stones. Image, my own.

Shit That Makes Poets Laugh

a couplet of haiku
getting to write the word
Uranus
espousing astrology while
being an unbeliever
writing all the people
you know into poems
recording the natural
world and wishing for
more smell words—the
olfactory is important,
man, and so under
expressioned—playing with
all mediums of art– music,
history, science, language,
painting, sculpture, theater–
being a badass generalist
the fact that mostly poets
read your poems
realizing that everything
is art, and it’s easier
than you think to tell
someone to fuck off
trying to figure out
if anyone really has an
editor? (Maggie Smith,
in my dreams you’re
reading this and cutting
and slashing, and un en-
jambing to your heart’s
delight.) Hearing that
one of Mary Oliver’s
best poems, ‘Wild Geese’
was an exercise, and
experiment in end-
stopped lines performed
for another poet, a magic
trick (hear Krista Tippet’s
interview with Oliver
on her unparalleled podcast
*On Being*)
realizing that your fly is
down, thank you John
Craigie
trying to figure out the
infinite mystery while
trying to figure out
american politics while
simultaneously realizing
that life is built on water
looking up the word ‘word’
in a thesaurus
realizing that you
should have hidden an
easter egg in all of your
work and you’ve forgotten

Balance. Oregon Coast. Image, my own.

Libra Season

As Libra season concludes, I’d like to
invite all of us to love a lot of Libras
for the next few days. Like
my triple air massage therapist,
bless her. And my best friend of
all time, he could not be more elegant and
nuanced in his approach to the world, and people
who I don’t even know, and people I once knew
all air signs, maybe it is the open-hearted
pleasers, balancing their relationships, the “we”
that Libras present, it’s that fire in me that
always gets stirred up by the scale and measure,
skin and bones, maybe it is the quality of the
breeze this time of year that makes me
fall in love with Libras, a little more each
October, regardless, I breath the unruly whips
of Wind and Rain, the scatter of leaves,
the romance of dying with Libras in mind

Hunter’s Moon. Super Moon. Full Moon. October 2024. Image, my own.

Chap Book
best is the open
chap book on the soul leave it
vulnerable in air

Green things and fog. Image, my own.

Lovng Hard (no i)
Sussing and figuring
and preparing and
planning as to how
to love
difficult people:
Drive the Bus,
Like Mo Willems’
Pigeon, in the
front seat
Self-assured, ready
Without license, but
there is no playbook
to love these difficult,
purposeless individuals
NPCs, people who have,
a bit, burned out on life
Who see the end, but
seem to have no ideas
on wellness or whole
ness- are not willing or
able to take the reins
any longer, who are
Offensive and rude
Blunt without purpose
Unmeasured in their
Aimless wanderings
through Time and
Space, Pretentious in
their lack of attention
to others, Tough

Summer Triangle. Oregon, October. Image, my own.