Category: leaves

The Whole Shadowed Earth Reaching Up

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  the season quicker now
the darkening—

no longer the leaves
fluttering down

but the whole shadowed earth
reaching up, taking hold
~David Baker “Quicker”

Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what’s a heaven for?
~Robert Browning from Andrea del Sarto

My branches are bared during this season of letting go.

As starkly revealed as I am, perhaps darkening days are a blessing: less spotlight on my complexity in silhouette – all knobby joints, awkward angles and curves.

One thing I know: in this season when I prefer the shadowland, I still reach up, trying to hold on to the promise beyond me. In fact, so many of us keep grasping at what we know is there but cannot see.

God has come down to grab on to each one of us — and is still hanging on.

We are not too plain or complex or awkward to be lifted, welcomed, cherished as we are, into heaven’s arms.

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Time to Say Grace

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You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.
~G.K. Chesterton

Norman Rockwell’s 1951 painting Saying Grace

Chesterton has it right.  No matter what I embark on, I should say grace first.  Even my breathing, my waking, and my sleeping. Even the brilliance right outside my back door.

Continual and constant thanks and praise to the Creator for all things bright and beautiful, and helping us through the dark times. 

Instead I am plagued with inconstancy and inconsistency, with a stubborn tendency to take it all for granted.

As I “dip pen in ink” this morning, join me in saying grace:

He is worthy. Amen and Amen.

Even more so.  Ever more now.

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Kicking Up Leaves

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Just as, when you keep watch
on the ground ahead of where your boots
kick up the leaves, the path
goes vague and blurred, while

if you lift your eyes the far
reach of the trail comes lucid
as map; so when you look
at tomorrow through next year,

the way, otherwise
so tangled and burdensome,
clears. And if the leaves
are, as they likely are,

fallen from the trees around you,
then you get to look
deeper into things
than spring allowed.
~Charles O. Hartman “Autumn Ordinance”

I remember it
as October days are always remembered,
cloudless, maple-flavored,
the air gold and so clean
it quivers.
~Leif Enger, from Peace Like a River 

The air tastes like autumn,
quivering on my tongue –
no need for pumpkin-spice flavoring
to feel the change.

Revel in the gold and bronze tint to the sky,
the cinnamon nutmeg dusting of the trees,
the heavy sprinkling of hanging dew drops,
the crisp and shivery breezes,
the new landscape peering through bony branches.

Soon the ground will be frosty instead of dusty,
leaving a crunchy carpet rather than shady veil.

October is always a much-needed transition,
keeping us fresh gazing at new horizons,
reminding us to breathe deeply when life feels shallow,
remembering we are immersed
in the glory of a new day we have never lived before.

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Lamenting Leaves Scattered in Ruin

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October’s bellowing anger breaks and cleaves
The bronzed battalions of the stricken wood
In whose lament I hear a voice that grieves
For battle’s fruitless harvest, and the feud
Of outraged men. Their lives are like the leaves
Scattered in flocks of ruin, tossed and blown
Along the westering furnace flaring red.
O martyred youth and manhood overthrown,
The burden of your wrongs is on my head.
~Siegfried Sassoon “Autumn” (about his time in the trenches in WWI)

Over more than a century,
we have learned little
about how to resolve
the bellows of outraged men.

The fruitless harvest of battle,
counting up each violent death,
as warships gather
for unsanctioned war games.

Lament the tossing and blowing of lives
like October leaves, in a show of force
as transient and arbitrary as the wind,
merely to make a fruitless point…

to what end are the feuds of angry men?

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Hushed October Morning

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O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
~Robert Frost from “October”

After yesterday’s travel through curtains of heavy rainfall,
we abandoned plans to meet with family across state
for today’s memorial service, so returned home,
defeated, weary with sadness.

October is enough reminder of mortality,
with winds stripping trees to bare bones,
birds flocking and vacating,
bright leaves reduced to rusting dust.

This morning, the rain suspended,
its gray curtain pulled back briefly
to view what awaits beyond the haze:
this luminous brilliance, radiance, promise.

Slow down to look. Slow down to live. Slow.

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The Sound of Leaves Falling

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l(a

le
af
fa
ll

s)
one
l

iness
~e.e.cummings “a leaf falls on loneliness”

Now constantly there is the sound,
quieter than rain,
of the leaves falling.

Under their loosening bright
gold, the sycamore limbs
bleach whiter.

Now the only flowers
are beeweed and aster, spray
of their white and lavender
over the brown leaves.

The calling of a crow sounds
Loud — landmark — now
that the life of summer falls
silent, and the nights grow.
~Wendell Berry “October 10” from New Collected Poems.

Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the heart feels a languid grief
Laid on it for a covering,
And how sleep seems a goodly thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?

And how the swift beat of the brain
Falters because it is in vain,
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf
Knowest thou not? and how the chief
Of joys seems — not to suffer pain?

Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the soul feels like a dried sheaf
Bound up at length for harvesting,
And how death seems a comely thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?
~Dante Rossetti “Autumn Song”

If I were a color, I am green, turning to gold,
turning to bronze, becoming dust.

If I were a sound, I patter like raindrops and children’s feet.
If I were a smell, I would be dry earth soaking up rain.
If I were a touch, I am a leaf letting go, landing softly.
If I were a taste, I would be warm and bittersweet.
If I were a season, I am the wistful goodbye hug of autumn.

But I am none of these, being enough for now;
this is enough for now.

Singing in the falling leaves,
I will come rejoicing,
Singing in the leaves.

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An Unshadowed Light

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Within the ongoing havoc
the woods this morning is
almost unnaturally still.
Through stalled air, unshadowed
light, a few leaves fall
of their own weight.

                                       The sky
is gray. It begins in mist
almost at the ground
and rises forever. The trees
rise in silence almost
natural, but not quite,
almost eternal, but
not quite.

                      What more did I
think I wanted? Here is
what has always been.
Here is what will always
be. Even in me,
the Maker of all this
returns in rest, even
to the slightest of His works,
a yellow leaf slowly
falling, and is pleased.
~Wendell Berry “VII” from This Day

What more did I think I wanted?

What always has been and always will be:

Until I’m not able to hold on in the wind and rain,
may I be a spot of unshadowed light
in this dark and bleak world.

I’ll let go like a yellow leaf in autumn,
when the time comes,
if it pleases my Maker.

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Dropping Leaves on Time

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Late in November, on a single night
Not even near to freezing, the ginkgo trees
That stand along the walk drop all their leaves
In one consent, and neither to rain nor to wind
But as though to time alone: the golden and green
Leaves litter the lawn today, that yesterday
Had spread aloft their fluttering fans of light.

What signal from the stars? What senses took it in?
What in those wooden motives so decided
To strike their leaves, to down their leaves,
Rebellion or surrender? and if this
Can happen thus, what race shall be exempt?
What use to learn the lessons taught by time,
If a star at any time may tell us: Now.
~Howard Nemerov “The Consent” from The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov

So many reasons these days to awake in the night,
eyes wide open, searching the dark seas of trouble
for some sign of hope,
for calm and peace in this stormy world.

When asleep again, I float among abundant
golden gingko leaves, each waving like a sail in the breeze,
before they tumble, swirling, to the ground, forming
deeply cushioned and comforting pools of yellow.

Navigating these brutal times, I am meant to be
anchored within some safer harbor – I treasure
the old ginkgo as it reaches over each cherished child
with its golden cloak of love and protection.

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As Leaf Subsides to Leaf

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Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.
~Robert Frost “Nothing Gold Can Stay”

Stay gold, Ponyboy, stay gold.
~S.E. Hinton from The Outsiders

Man’s innocence was lost
the moment we chose
knowledge over obedience.

The gold in our creation
sinks to grief as
we continue to make the same mistakes
again and again;

each dawn reenacts our beginnings
as leaf subsides to leaf
and each winter our endings.

Our only salvage is rescue
borne of selflessness,
an obedience beyond imagining.

Christ stays gold for us;
we rise illuminated like dawn.

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A Light of Beginnings

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For seasons the walled meadow
south of the house built of its stone
grows up in shepherd’s purse and thistles
the weeds share April as a secret
finches disguised as summer earth
click the drying seeds
mice run over rags of parchment in August
the hare keeps looking up remembering 
a hidden joy fills the songs of the cicadas

two days’ rain wakes the green in the pastures
crows agree and hawks shriek with naked voices
on all sides the dark oak woods leap up and shine
the long stony meadow is plowed at last and lies
all day bare
I consider life after life as treasures
oh it is the autumn light

that brings everything back in one hand
the light again of beginnings
the amber appearing as amber
~ W. S. Merwin, “September Plowing” from Flower & Hand

photo by Joel De Waard

When you are already here
you appear to be only
a name that tells of you
whether you are present or not

and for now it seems as though
you are still summer
still the high familiar
endless summer
yet with a glint
of bronze in the chill mornings
and the late yellow petals
of the mullein fluttering
on the stalks that lean
over their broken
shadows across the cracked ground

but they all know
that you have come
the seed heads of the sage
the whispering birds
with nowhere to hide you
to keep you for later

you
who fly with them

you who are neither
before nor after
you who arrive
with blue plums
that have fallen through the night

perfect in the dew
~W.S. Merwin “To the Light of September”

Now that it has rained a bit, the light of September is a filtered, more gentle illumination than we have experienced for the past several months of dry summer glare.

It is more lambent: a soft radiance that simply glows at certain times of the day when the angle of the sun is just right, and the clouds are in position to soften and cushion the luminence.

It is also liminal: it is neither before or after, on the threshold between seasons when there is both promise and caution in the air.

Sometimes I think I can breathe in light like this, if not through my lungs, then through my eyes.

It is a temptation to bottle it up with a stopper somehow, stow it away hidden in a back cupboard. Then I can bring it out on the darkest days, pour a bit into a glass, and imbibe.

But for now, I fill myself full to the brim. And my only means of preservation is with a camera and a few words.

So I share it now with all of you to tuck away for a future day.
Perhaps you too will be thirsty for a lambent light.

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