This beautiful poem, an ode to autumn, comes from Don Corson, winemaker and co-owner of Camaraderie Cellars in Port Angeles, Washington. In my “other life” (as an award-winning food and wine writer) I wrote an article on Olympic Coast cuisine for The Seattle Times Pacific Northwest magazine’s weekly Taste column.

Entitled, In the Loop, the article profiled Don and other winemakers and restaurateurs from the northern part of Washington state.

A true thinker and dreamer, Don and his wife, Vicki, live where they work–in a statue-garden-like paradise that serves as tasting room, winery, and their home.

Here is Don’s “Autumnal Birth,” which he describes as “a Hildegardian Muse.”

***

Spring’s planting into warm moist earth,

The fertile seed trenched in womb-like soil

There to grow and sprout in the power of

Greening Veriditas.

***

Longer Summer days

Envelop prenatal fruit of vine, tree, and flower

And nurtures the making of the Mystery of ripeness and true birth.

***

Greening grows into Autumnal golding and purpling, reddening and umbering,

Saplings harden,

Leanness fattens,

Thinness plumps,

Sourness sweetens.

***

Birth emerges not as seed sprouted but as fruit picked!

***

My heart, dear Lord,

A ripe fruit in making,

Take it in your time for your plucking by the

Nurture and greening power of your ripened resurrection.

Amen