Category: Autumn 2024

Just in time for Halloween
pumpkin-orange tulips popped up
on the shelves of my grocer’s store.
They seemed rather spooky to me,
I admit, quite out of place and time.
A trick of commerce, I scoffed.
But then their beauty won me,
coaxing me to change my view.
It’s not a trick, but a treat, I decided.
Tulips should get to play, too.

A few days back, fewer than I can count
on my fingers, some of the maples
still wore their circus colors, other trees
still held their green. “Trick or treat”
is the call of the season. Now the boughs
are all but bare and the wind howls, ghostlike,
hurling what’s left to the ground.
That’s quite a trick. But be patient.
The treat still lies ahead.

Patiently they wait, holding their green
while the beeches and sassafras
open the show. They watch
the maples and their neighbors
paint the hills with their yellows,
their burgundies, golds, and crimsons.
Then the rain comes, washing
all but shreds of color to the ground.
And just when you think
that autumn has spent her glory,
you wake to find that the oaks
have stepped onto the stage
to dance the grand finale
of autumn’s wondrous show.

Suddenly a high wind blew in from the west
and I stood there, dizzy with delight,
as the trees sent bushels of leaves
tumbling on the rushing air and twirling
all around me.
It was grand.
And the trees and I laughed.

Before the colors are swallowed up
by winter’s quiet dreams, let us
give you one more sweep of hues
to carry you through the colorless cold.
Tuck these bold flags into the corners
of your mind. Wave them on nights
when the wind howls, when snow
pulls its white blankets over your fields.
Let them warm you with their bright songs
and encourage you when the days
seem bleak and endless. Let them whisper
to you that winter is but a pulling back
of the Archer’s bow so that, come spring,
new songs may rise, and joy, renewed,
may fill your soul.

“Yes,” I said, as I came upon them,
their arms stretched toward the light
as if in joyful praise,
“That’s how I feel, too.”

You can tell me the how of it all that you want,
explaining the way the light rays bend
around the curvature of the earth,
and how their travel through the atmosphere
produces all these colors. It doesn’t change things
or answer the why. There didn’t have to be beauty.
But here it is, glowing, and touching our souls.
I say it is a gift, a love note from the Yes,
just because.

This. To walk in this gold feels a privilege.
To hear the crunch of the brush
beneath my boots and the whispering
of the breeze through the dry dancing leaves,
to watch the hawk soar and heaped clouds
sail the endless blue, and crimson leaves
twirling down from the trees as if their fall
were part of some grand ballet.
This. Every miraculous detail. Such a gift.
Such a priceless gift.

One of the things that the Great Yes wanted to experience
was being a maple tree whose leave would turn red in fall.
And so it did.
And on one perfect October afternoon
when the air was cool and the sun warm
and shining through its red leaves,
the maple danced, and the Great Yes sang
from within its very atoms in absolute joy.

A host of lore abounds
telling how your coat,
dear woolly bear, predicts
what winter will hold.
The greater the brown,
the milder the season;
an abundance of black
means plenty of snow.
Here’s what I know:
You’re a sure sign
that winter is next,
and if I was smart,
I’d be digging out
woollies of my own.