On this Feast of All Saints I think of all the saints who inspire me day to day, especially St. Paul, St. Augustine, and St. Ignatius Loyola; and all the writers who guide me, especially Dante and Hopkins and O’Connor; and all my own beloved dead, especially Andy and Jac and Grandfather.
And I think of how on All Saints we always read the Beatitudes—“blessed are the poor in spirit”–“blessed are the meek”—and how poorness of spirit and meekness and gentleness are so contrary to the materialism and competitiveness of the heroes our culture keeps telling us to follow, the athletes and the pop stars and the loud politicians.
And I rejoice and am glad.
A poem on this All Saints, which is also, of course, the first day of the end of Daylight Savings Time.
Falling Back
Waking up to leaves
and the luxury of leaves
and the way time eases and slows
this one day every fall.
Sixty times now for me,
though it’s only lately
I’ve been noticing.
The usual clichés: clouds
racing past the moon.
Leaves fluttering down
over the highway.
The way when you drop
a hammer from a roof
it disappears into the leaves.
Red and yellow and brown.