autumn sonnets 2 lines

If I can let you go as trees let go / Their leaves, so casually, one by one;

Sonnet 2

If I can come to know what they do know, / That fall is the release, the consummation,

Sonnet 2

Then fear of time and the uncertain fruit / Would not distemper the great lucid skies

Sonnet 2

This strangest autumn, mellow and acute. / If I can take the dark with open eyes

Sonnet 2

And call it seasonal, not harsh or strange / (For love itself may need a time of sleep),

Sonnet 2

And, treelike, stand unmoved before the change, / Lose what I lose to keep what I can keep,

Sonnet 2

The strong root still alive under the snow, / Love will endure—if I can let you go.

Sonnet 2

After a night of rain the brilliant screen / Below my terraced garden falls away.

Sonnet 5

And there, far off, I see the hills again / On this, a raw and windy, somber day.

Sonnet 5

Moments of loss, and it is overwhelming / (Crimson and gold gone, that rich tapestry),

Sonnet 5

But a new vision, quiet and soul-calming, / Distance, design, are given back to me.

Sonnet 5

This is good poverty, now love is lean, / More honest, harder than it ever was

Sonnet 5

When all was glamoured by a golden screen. / The hills are back, and silver on the grass,

Sonnet 5

As I look without passion or despair / Out on a larger landscape, grand and bare.

Sonnet 5

For steadfast flame wood must be seasoned, / And if love can be trusted to last out,

Sonnet 11

Then it must first be disciplined and reasoned / To take all weathers, absences, and doubt.

Sonnet 11

No resinous pine for this, but the hard oak / Slow to catch fire, would see us through a year.

Sonnet 11

We learned to temper words before we spoke, / To force the furies back, learn to forbear,

Sonnet 11

In silence to wait out erratic storm, / And bury tumult when we were apart.

Sonnet 11

The fires were banked to keep a winter warm / With heart of oak instead of resinous heart

Sonnet 11

And in this testing year beyond desire / Began to move toward durable fire.

Sonnet 11