Category: Seasons

Sourland Mountain in July

Some landscapes quietly become part of our lives. I took this photograph years ago on a midsummer walk through Sourland Mountain in New Jersey. The poem that follows grew from that same summer afternoon and carries with it the deep green stillness of July.

Sourland Mountain in July

The asphalt fajita pan
sizzles,
white papal smoke ascends
from black aluminum,
scorches
naked feet,
temperatures climb, calibrated
for the appointed broiling
of flesh—

Sourland Mountain at noonday
in July:
I listen to the psalms of emerald leaves
upon twigs and branches
uplifted in praise,
the songs of the scarlet tanager,
melodious with the orchestra of Monét clouds
in this gated city of chlorophyll,
a uniform green madness—

Though I walk
through the hardness of rocks
and boulders,
I will not take this green
for granted,
I mumble on every single leaf
of fern, weed and tree,
revel
in the uncomfortable warmth,
while the green is teeming

at this very moment

before the gradual accumulated
turnings of the universe,
of sun, moon and stars
awaken
the coldness from its slumber,
before the leaves turn
into empty brown
paper bags
blown by the wind.

—Deirdra Vachal

From the poetry collection Where Love Dwells (2025) by Deirdra Garcia Vachal

Photography by Deirdra Vachal

Twilight and the Scent of Honeysuckle

Stepping outside this evening, I was unexpectedly greeted by the lingering fragrance of honeysuckle climbing through the lilacs. The garden, at the end of May, seemed briefly suspended between bloom and fading.

Twilight and the Scent of Honeysuckle ​
​
twilight—
the scent of honeysuckle​
fills the lavender air,
lilacs and dogwoods ​
sing their last notes
of song—
​
twilight—
the scent of white peonies
intoxicates,
while yellow and purple irises​
are at the tip of bloom, ​
and day lilies
await to explode ​
in tangerine madness— ​
​
twilight—
at the end of May
in my garden
suspended
between blossom
and fading

—D. G. Vachal​ ©2026

Love’s Return

Love’s Return

thaw—
chameleon-clad hylas
swarm the moss-green ponds
and buds of water lilies
arise from stalks
among the mottled pads—

I thought you were gone,
buried under hills of snow—

now you return

in the low hum of bees,
the soft whisper
of butterfly wings

I feel you near
in the warmth—

yet I somehow know
you have always been
with me in the cold.

— D. G. Vachal 2026

Image: Seerosen (1915) by Claude Monet

The Turning of Light


The cover of my second poetry book collection, The Turning of Light, features Claude Monet’s luminous painting, Woman With a Parasol, Facing Left (1886), one of the most beloved images of the Impressionist movement.​

​In the painting, Monet captured more than a woman standing in a field. He captured a moment of living light — clouds drifting across the sky, wind moving through tall grass, and sunlight shifting across the landscape.​

​Nothing in the scene is still. Light moves, the sky changes, and the moment itself seems to pass even as we look at it.​

​That quiet transformation of light lies close to the spirit of the poems in The Turning of Light, which follow the turning of the seasons and the subtle ways time reshapes memory, love, and the inner life.​​


The Turning of Light can be found on Amazon in Kindle, paperback, and hardcover versions.

November the Penultimate


November the Penultimate

Never was a month so motley in its days:
November, penultimate month
of a year that frames the seasons,
when leaves in early days
turn to brightest garnet,
blazing topaz,
illuminated gold —

the latter days arrive
with the fire of the winds,
and the burning leaves take the plunge
from infernal towers of the branches
to the burial grounds of a gun-
metal, brumal earth —

November, November,
calves ache from the marathon,
hearts pound the door
to another December

when holly berries huddle upon the petals
of the soft-spoken snow,
and the fallen leaves breathe again
at the sound of the carols of the children,
the children rejoicing.

D. G. Vachal © 2013

Photography Credit: November’s Decline by Bucaneve