Spring blossoms,
pink and translucent,
whisked away too soon
by cruel winds
but autumn blossoms
in gold and red,
a filter for noonday sun
give me joy.
“How beautiful the leaves grow old.
How full of light and color are their last days.”
~ John Burroughs, essayist
(1837 ~ 1921)
Brilliant fuschia peonies
crowned this bush at bloom time.
Now slender leaves display
their own beauty before
the fade and sleep of autumn.
“Colours make nature pulsate with life.”
~ Michael Bassey Johnson, Song of a Nature Lover
Each leaf ‘a sliver of colour’ ,
gold dust through arching branches.
I am warmed by the golden glow
as the sun leans toward the horizon.
“Fading birdsong underscores this bottled time,
In butterfly hears, the hourglass stilled sublime.”
~ Stewart Stafford, A Magic Hour’s Dreaming
Inspired by poem: September Mushrooms by Margaret Atwood
Thoughts
like crisped leaves
rustling along the sidewalks
at the beck and call
of the wind or my booted feet.
~ the red gold crunch of autumn.
“Anyone who things fallen leaves are dead
has never watched them dancing on a windy day.”
~ Shira Tamir
Curling leaves
Crumbling leaves
Fading flags of autumn
“I can smell autumn dancing in the breeze. The sweet
chill of pumpkin, and crisp sunburnt leaves.”
~ Ann Drake
 |
| October, 2008 Hazeldell Orchards, Kelowna |
Autumn shows up faithfully each year to the call of the geese gathering flocks; with boisterous winds cold and rough edged.
Bales of straw and hay, rolled and tied, lie quietly in fields of gold, a nest for mice and voles until trucked away.
Leaves, as if by magic, change into their beautiful red, gold, orange hues readying for the final float to the ground.
Fruits, vegetables and grain,
ripe for harvesting, fill markets
with abundance for winter
sustenance and goodness.
Soups and stews bubble and steam
to serve the bounty of harvest
at the table; warming insides
to ease the loss of summer.
Sweaters and blankets, their cosy warmth
for colder days and nights, are
resurrected from dark cupboards
~ friendly companions in the chill of autumn.
“I notice that Autumn is more the season of the soul than of nature.”
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Dry earth soaks in cold rain,
while leaves shelter raindrops
adrift in the wind.
“We’re as ephemeral as raindrops.
We all fall, and we all land somewhere.”
~ Robert Charles Wilson, author
There are tree experts that
could tell me what these
crusty brown growths are.
I suspect they are buds
~ for new leaves?
Rather like all of us
as we grow. We get
crusty with new knowledge
mixed with old lessons.
As leaves and blossoms
emerge the crusts fall to the
ground, the protection for
new growth no longer needed.
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud
was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
~ Anaïs Nin, author
It’s more than just Monday.
It’s an everyday thing.
Like the trees and the seasons.
Trees that stand guard and
seasons that change.
When I got in my little blue car
to drive away in 1988 I couldn’t
know that I would grow up for
32 years. I couldn’t know of all
the seasons that would pass, that I
would return to new growth and
growing in my family; carrying
all the ancestral bits of DNA of
an ever spreading family. Branches of an original tree. But for now, I hear the rustle of golden leaves,
stirred by the wind of a changing
season and know that I am home.
It’s more than just Monday.
It’s an everyday thing.
Like the trees and the seasons.
Trees that stand guard and
seasons that change.
“We can only be said to be alive in those moments
when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.”
~ Thornton Wilder
I am not sad when I feel
the crunch of crisped leaves
beneath my feet, when I
know that in the not too
distant future, it will be the
icy crunch of snow.
There is a touch of, I think,
nostalgia somewhere between
my heart and my mid section.
It’s an odd feeling. A gentle tug that eases when I kick through the crumbling leaves.
I don’t even throw sidelong
glances to see if anyone’s
watching. By chance, I took a
different route home. I walked
under arching elm trees bursting
with gold, aglow in the afternoon sun.
“I have been younger in October than in all the months of spring.”
~ W.S.Merwin, poet
(Sept 1927 ~ March 2019)
