Tag: naked

Edging Closer for Company

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The trees are coming into their winter bareness,
the only green is the lichen on their branches.
Against the hemlocks, the rain is falling in dim, straight lines…
This is the time of year when all the houses have come out of the woods, edging closer to the roads as if for company.
~Verlyn Klinkenborg “The Rain It Raineth”

The deciduous trees in our part of the country have all been stripped bare, having come through rain and gusty winds in the last week.  It forces typically leaf-hidden homes out of camouflage and I’m once again startled at the actual proximity of our neighbors.  It isn’t as obvious in the summer given the tree buffer everyone has carefully planted.  Now we’re reminded once again we are not alone and actually never have been.

Even the mountains that surround us from the northwest to the southeast seem closer when the trees are bare and new snow has settled on their steep shoulders.

We think we have autonomy all wrapped up but it takes the storms of autumn to remind us we are unwrapped and vulnerable, stark naked, in desperate need of company when darkness comes early, the snow flies and the lights are flickering.

photo by Nate Gibson

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The Trees are Undressing

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The trees are undressing, and fling in many places—
On the gray road, the roof, the window-sill—
Their radiant robes and ribbons and yellow laces;
A leaf each second so is flung at will,
Here, there, another and another, still and still.

A spider’s web has caught one while downcoming,
That stays there dangling when the rest pass on;
Like a suspended criminal hangs he, mumming
In golden garb, while one yet green, high yon,
Trembles, as fearing such a fate for himself anon.
~Thomas Hardy “Last Week in October”

So we too may be flung into the unknown,
trembling in the chill wind,
unready to let go of what sustains us,
fated to land wherever the storm blows.

Yet caught up by a silken thread,
left to dangle suspended by faith
to await the hope of rescue, alone and together,
another and another, still and still.

As Trees Undress

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Everybody here knows what you mean
when you say, “The colors,” especially now,

the second day in October. They know
you’re talking about leaves turning away

from green — as in the yellows of elm and cottonwood,
the red-orange maple, the purple-red ash and aspen gold.

But only because we live here. Someplace else, where a year
is not so divided by seasons, colors

means something else — as in a knitter’s choice of skeins,
a budding artist’s paints for her work

in progress, a chef’s arrangement of aubergines
nestled against purple baby potatoes

and yams as bright as, yes, the turning leaves.
Colors — as in every shade surrounding

the second day of October, the day this year
when my mother would have turned eighty

and I remember that she loved palette words:
ecru,
chartreuse,
fuchsia,
and all the brightest reds
of the turning leaves.
~Monica Sharman, “The Colors” from Monica Sharman Editing

 

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I’m wistful about the flame-out of color happening now – autumn leaves have been so exorbitantly boisterous and vibrant that watching the trees undressed by the wind feels unseemly and scandalous.  They seem more naked than usual because their costuming has been so extravagantly rich for weeks.

I’m depleted of exuberant words to describe the landscape so will just settle in behind my retinas and enjoy what’s left for dessert.  I’m satiated and ready for a nap.

Through the deep of winter, as I close my eyes,  visions of reds and golds and oranges will continue to dance merrily in my head.

 

 

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A Mosaic of Leaves

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And then in the falling comes a rising, 
as of the bass coming up for autumn’s last insects 
struggling amid the mosaic of leaves on the lake’s surface. 
We express it as the season of lacking, but what is this nakedness
— the unharvested corn frost-shriveled but still a little golden 
under the diffuse light of a foggy sky,
the pin oak’s newly stark web of barbs, the woodbine’s vines 
shriven of their scarlet and left askew in the air 
like the tangle of threads on the wall’s side 
of the castle tapestry—what is it but greater intimacy,
the world slackening its grip on the veils, letting them slump
to the floor in a heap of sodden colors, and saying,
this is me, this is my skeletal muscle, 
my latticework of bones, my barren winter skin, 
this is it and if you love me, know that this is what you love. 
~Laura Fargas “October Struck” from Animal of the Sixth Day

 

 

 

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Something about the emerging nakedness of autumn reassures that we can be loved even when stripped down to our bones. We do make quite a show of shedding our coverings, our bits and pieces fluttering down to rejoin the soil, but what is left is meager lattice.

But when the light is just right, we are golden, illuminated and illuminating, even if barely there.

 

 

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