Category: trees

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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In the Light-Charged Air

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When I saw the figure on the crown of the hill,
high above the city, standing perfectly still

against a sky so saturated with the late-
afternoon, late-summer Pacific light

that granules of it seemed to have come out
of solution, like a fine precipitate

of crystals hanging in the brightened air,
I thought whoever it was standing up there

must be experiencing some heightened state
of being, or thinking—or its opposite,

thoughtlessly enraptured by the view.
Or maybe, looking again, it was a statue

of Jesus or a saint, placed there to bestow
a ceaseless blessing on the city below.

Only after a good five minutes did I see
that the figure was actually a tree—

some kind of cypress, probably, or cedar.
I was both amused and let down by my error.

Not only had I made the tree a person,
but I’d also given it a vision,

which seemed to linger in the light-charged air
around the tree’s green flame, then disappear.
~Jeffrey Harrison “The Figure on the Hill” from Into Daylight

Who was it who suggested that the opposite of war
Is not so much peace as civilisation? He knew
Our assassinated Catholic greengrocer who died
At Christmas in the arms of our Methodist minister,
And our ice-cream man whose continuing requiem
Is the twenty-one flavours children have by heart.
Our cobbler mends shoes for everybody; our butcher
Blends into his best sausages leeks, garlic, honey;
Our cornershop sells everything from bread to kindling.
Who can bring peace to people who are not civilised?
All of these people, alive or dead, are civilised.
~Michael Longley “All of These People”  from Collected Poems

Who among us appear
in the light-charged air,
visible on the crown of the hill of life –
who might be mistaken
for a martyr or a saint or a visionary,
when each one of us is
merely a person
responsible to a family,
committed to help friends,
dedicated to serve a community,
placed in this world to steady a broken civilization.

There is the simple truth that we need a person
with roots deep in the ground,
branches that reach up and out,
bearing fruit to share with those around us.

But surely not
this misery, not this blight, not this trouble,
certainly not these murders,
which only bears and shares
a heart-rending, horrible grief.

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The Old Lost Road

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They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.

Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate,
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few.)
You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods.
But there is no road through the woods.
~Rudyard Kipling “The Way Through the Woods”

Nature has a way of covering our offending tracks,
given time and left alone.

We think we’ve built a lasting impression,
clearing the path for easy passage,
forging ahead into the future.

Yet no invitation is needed
for the overgrowth to reclaim
the road some folks traveled,
once upon a time.

Now the old lost road is overwhelmed
by the mists and mosses of time;
may it stay buried in the past
as we pass through,
unnoticed and oblivious.

photo by Emily VanderHaak

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An Evening Stroll

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You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
~ Dr. Seuss

You give the appearance of listening
To my thoughts, O trees,
Bent over the road I am walking
On a late summer evening
When every one of you is a steep staircase
The night is slowly descending.

The high leaves like my mother’s lips
Forever trembling, unable to decide,
For there’s a bit of wind,
And it’s like hearing voices,
Or a mouth full of muffled laughter,
A huge dark mouth we can all fit in
Suddenly covered by a hand.

Everything quiet.

The sky at the road’s end cloudless and blue.
The night birds like children
Who won’t come to dinner.
Lost children in the darkening woods.
~Charles Simic from “Evening Walk” in The Voice at 3 A.M.”

I wonder about the trees.

My feet tug at the floor
And my head sways to my shoulder
Sometimes when I watch trees sway,
From the window or the door.
I shall set forth for somewhere,
I shall make the reckless choice
Some day when they are in voice
And tossing so as to scare
The white clouds over them on.
I shall have less to say,
But I shall be gone.
~Robert Frost from “The Sound of Trees”

The voice of the trees urges me to move my feet
while they stay rooted in place.

I am propelled forward by winds that
strip away leaves, bend branches.

Tempted to simply stand and watch their motion,
instead I walk among the rooted ones, grateful for my legs.

They clap their hands and wave as I pass by.

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In the Willow Stillness

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…today, the unseen was everything.
The unknown, the only real fact of life.
All this he saw,
for one moment breathless and intense,
vivid on the morning sky;
and still, as he looked, he lived;
and still, as he lived, he wondered.
~Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

Purposefully lost in the willow stillness
of a late summer meadow
in the deer-filled dusk—a silver evening
following a blue and amber day.
~Tim Hawkins “Purposefully Lost” from West of the Backstory

I search for the unseen,
purposely lost,
hoping to find meaning in the unknown.

I am bewildered by this life much of the time.
Anyone looking at what I share here sees
my struggle each day to discern
how to make this sad and suffering world
a little bit better place.

I have little to offer you
other than my own wrestling match
with the mysteries we all face.

Then, when a light does shine out through darkness, 
when a deer steps out of the woods into the meadow,
I am not surprised. 

I simply need to pay attention.
Illumination was there all the time,
but I needed the eyes to see its beauty laid bare,
brave enough to show itself even brighter in the light of day.

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Aiming for the Chopping Block

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Aim for the chopping block.
If you aim for the wood, you will have nothing.
Aim past the wood, aim through the wood;
aim for the chopping block.
~Annie Dillard from The Writing Life

photo by Josh Scholten

Over seventeen years ago, I decided to aim for the block on this website of reflections, as if words were wood and pictures were kindling. I started storing up cords of words and pictures, chopping away every day in case I’d need this storehouse of fuel in the future.

As a result, my ax needs constant sharpening.

I have ended up with a quite a pile of over 5000 posts strewn about my feet due to random chopping. I’ve been drenched in sweat at times, some complain about the noise I make, and I’ve garnered my share of blisters and splinters.

I’m readying for when the weather gets cold and the nights long.

It is not that the world needs another blog post or another book —
instead I keep a focused aim, chopping by keeping my eye on the block, cutting through and past the wood. Writing is something to do because I feel better when I do it. What I store up here will keep us warm when life gives us chills.

AI image created for this post
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