Briana Petty-Olivares lived in our little Green Acres Village for  two years. A blossoming poet, and master of language even then — she was the one who came up with our simple, exacting motto — “Growing community from the ground up” —  her experience in the world is now catching up with her sharp, unexpected aesthetic to the point where, frankly, I’m still breathless as I savor this poem, its scents of Autumn and Essence catching me, over and over again, by surprise.

Brie sent this poem to me as a message first, on her fb page, then, a day or two later, made it public there. Good! Thank you Brie!

At home again
with the world,
with myself

sitting
on a knoll of prairie grass where
everything is goldenrod.
The Sun is high and the edges of leaves are
curled and gilded.
I imagine fur bodies,
small deer,
curled up somewhere, sleeping.

This utter incommunicable peace.
This vastness,
this breeze that pulls us into
another season.
That turns the stalks of wheat
towards each other
is simply the breath

we have been given,
reminding us to make
beautiful displays.
Assuring us
the bone-marrow knowledge:
in every seed, born to die.

And now,
my cells divided like
our orbit of the Sun.
In dappled light, on small dirt paths,
I am made whole.

What is happening here
as we age into autumn?
What is happening here
as the backdrop reveals new palettes, a wonder?
As the bees take their last drunken flight?

The nights get cooler
teaching us to warm ourselves.
In elemental, intrinsic worth,
to tend the true flame.