For the benefit of the Bewildered, of which group I am a fully paid up member, here is my latest poem, composed earlier in the year:
THE SPELLING OF AUTUMN
1.
When I said that it was autumn,
I could sense the soft departure
of my deity and calling
as they left me to the wasteland.
This occurred as I was moving
from the failure of my harvest
in ’25, though pausing
to admire the elegant spelling
of autumn and its bonding
of m and n that made
a tacit kind of music.
“What a lovely word,” I mumbled
vocationless and godless
at my computer screen.
‘The rest of this existence
may flounder into nothing
but the graceful spelling of autumn
has what it takes to stay.’
2.
When I said that it was autumn,
autumn said that it was me –
we were identical
creatures losing leaves.
Heeding the long-range forecast,
I’m busy bailing out
the bilgewater at last
to sail the Stygian seas
between here and hereafter,
both cabin boy and captain
of a craft with a single mast.
Reluctant, not the least
resigned to my departure
from the shores of everyday,
I’ll keep a cherished charm
against demons and delay –
the graceful spelling of autumn
my travel pass and totem.
3.
When I said that it was autumn,
with the stripping of the trees
and the leafy agitation,
with the failure of my harvest
and the death of my vocation,
with my fear of nervous breakdown,
distressed by all events
I prayed Emitte lucem
tuam et veritatem
but was granted no assurance,
not a prayer of breaking into
the light and truth away from
life’s headlong floundering.
What keeps me compos mentis,
my one and lone asylum,
is the minuscule epiphany
of a needle’s-eye redemption,
the graceful spelling of autumn.
© Ciaran O'Driscoll 2026
NOTES:
* “a craft with a single mast”: craft, boat or calling; a single mast, the t in autumn perhaps??
* “Emitte lucem tuam et veritatem (tuam)”: Send forth your light and truth (Psalm 43)
