October 29

A good time of year to like brown: we are all about texture now. Poofy seed pods of goldenrod, scruffy tree trunks, distant vaguely twiggy hillsides, nearly invisible deer. The sunrises are becoming oranger, though, and broad, behind the entire range of mountains to the east. The sun rises sometimes on fields made white with sparkling crystals, like very temporary snow.

Heavy frost—dogs leave

melted butt prints on lawn. The

paws that refreshes!

October 22

Wild raspberry leaves illuminated like stained glass, arching gracefully over milkweed pods. The double doors open and the silky white congregation exits, brown boots dangling as they fly home to their new place. The beech copse at the foot of the orchard has turned into a Klimt—golden cloud through which we glimpse the black structure of trunk and limb, the stiff and intertwining life that keeps us upright. Not sinister. Not Buchenwald—instead, The Kiss.

After a shower

droplets refract the colors—

one loud little world.

October 17

The bright golden days are fading now. Canes of maroon blackberry leaves flop over the trail, where the grass is still green and lush in the shadow of the browning goldenrod. It is not cold yet, but more and more trees are bare, more black limbs stand stark against the sky. The migrant songbirds have left, even the ones that nest far north of here. On pleasant nights, geese pass overhead. Summer has gone out like a tide, and sometime soon the warm air will go sliding away like the last bubbles on the trailing edge of a wave.

The postman sweeps

the leaves from his parking lot—

a new day begins.

October 1

After months of rain, finally a few dry weeks. Everyone loves this time of year—probably because the sun is out for days on end, and when does that ever happen in the Northeast? The ashes and basswoods are almost bare, the sugar maples turning gold and shedding gold smartly.

Cloud passes the sun,

a sudden spattering—rain?

No, shower of leaves.

September 10

Trees and earth studded with red and gold apples. Waist-deep goldenrod, bright yellow in waves down the hill. Cold mornings, then this reminder of late July. The crickets sing all day now.

Cosmos of apples

and asters—comet-like, a

deer goes sailing by.

August 11

All day, waiting for my friend to die, for her pain to stop, for her husband, her sister to sleep. Now awake close to midnight, out in the driveway, looking for shooting stars. The night bugs sing all around: summer is ending. A short flick of light; another; a longer one speeds by. Then a blue and gold Roman candle, headed East.

Lightning bugs faintly

glow in the grass--meteors

come to rest at last.

August 1

Rain again. The skies are pressing down on the fruit trees, already laden with apples and peaches, and the trees press toward the earth in turn. The stewardship committee at the nature preserve voted secretly whether or not to kill some trees they think might die in order to finance an attempt to save some other trees they think might die. They vote in secret on everything important now, since the gas drilling debate ended in hatred and shouting.

Cancer is eating

up my friend. Peach tree splits and

falls--too full to live.