Black and Gold

House on North 81st St in the Greenwood neighborhood

Black and Gold
by Nancy Byrd Turner

Everything is black and gold,
     Black and gold tonight:
Yellow pumpkins, yellow moon,
     Yellow candlelight;
Jet-black cat with golden eyes,
     Shadows black as ink,
Firelight blinking in the dark
     With a yellow blink.
Black and gold, black and gold,
     Nothing in between –
When the world turns
     Black and gold,
Then it’s Halloween!

Scattering Clattering Time

Joggers at Greenlake on an autumn morning

Maple trees lining the path at Greenlake

Fallen maple leaves cover the ground

A red carpet of fallen leaves

Autumn
by Debra Reinstra

now is the wind-time
the scattering clattering
song-on-the-lawn time
early eves and gray days
clouds shrouding the traveled ways
trees spare and cracked bare
slim fingers in the air
dry grass in the wind-lash
waving waving as the birds pass
the sky turns, the wind gusts
winter sweeps in
it must it must.

 

Seeing Sky

Tree showing its skeleton

“As October ends,
most of the branches are bare.
We see more sky.”
     — Gladys Taber

Vacation Reading

Reading in a rustic cabin

“And nothing is better than reading when there is nothing better to do.”
     –  Joseph Campbell

I almost always have a book or two with me so that I can read in odd moments throughout my day.  I’ve been known to read a book while walking around Green Lake.  On my recent Minnesota vacation, I finally had time to read Barack Obama’s books, Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope.  My sister gave me an historic novel by Jane Kirkpatrick called A Flickering Light about a woman photographer, and I read that, too.  I started, but did not quite finish Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains.  I am always overly optimistic about the books I’ll be able to read while on vacation.  There are too often better things to do!

Wood Fires

Fire crackling in my sister's wood stove

Reading magazines in front of a wood fire at the Snowshoe Country Lodge

My husband and I just turned on the furnace at our home in Seattle.  But when I was back in Minnesota earlier this month, I had the pleasure of warming myself in front of several wood stoves.  My oldest brother and sister both heat almost exclusively with wood.  And during our driving vacation in Northern Minnesota, my sister and I stayed at a rustic cabin, the Snowshoe Lodge, which had no running water and wood stove heating.  There is something comforting about warming oneself by a fire.

Wood Fires
by Gertrude Perry Stanton

Within the fireplace the flames leap high;

 Sparks crackle in a meteoric flight,

 Then dwindle to a pale and mellow light –

Soft radiance even where the shadows lie;

For every lovely thing the tree has known, –

 Stanch hickory, or gnarly apple bough,

 Treasured through years, is liberated now:

Bright sunsets, clover ready to be mown;

The flash of lightning, glow of stars serene;

 The opalescent hues of morning skies,

 Leaves gaily colored when the summer dies,

The tinge of purple in far mountains seen;

The strength and courage bred in hours of storm, –

 Peace, stored through long and warmly sunlit days;

 A spirit of content and reverent praise.

 

Milkweed in Autumn

Milkweed pod releasing its seeds on plumes of white

Milkweed pods

Lines to a Milkweed
by Gladys Higbee Polinske

Ah, lovely weed, and yet it seems a shame

To call thee by such name,

Who lends such beauty to the landscape fair,

As in the autumn air

Thy white wings float.

 

The children love thee, and with great delight

Do pluck thy seeds so white;

The pods wherein those silken seeds have grown,

That now have from them flown,

Each makes a boat.

 

And as for me, I love thee too, delight,

Thy silken wings so white

That sail upon the air, to me they seem

So like a lovely dream

That cannot last.

 

The empty pods in which the seeds have grown

That far away have flown,

Are like the lonely souls that grieve

For what they can’t retrieve

Because it’s passed.

 

 

When the Frost is on the Punkin

Line up of pumpkins for sale at a neighboring farm in Minnesota

“O, it sets my hart a-clickin’ like the tickin’ of a clock,
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock. . .”
     — James Whitcomb Riley

Red Maples

Red and yellow maple leaves with birch trees

Red maple leaf

“A maple has stepped from her leaves like a woman in love with winter, dropping the colored silks.”
     — Jane Hirshfield, “Three Times My Life Has Opened”

“The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown,
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I’ll put a trinket on.”
     — Emily Dickinson

Fall reflections, Big Bear Head Lake, Minnesota

“The fairies, it is said
Drop maple leaves into the stream
To dye their waters red.”
     — Kikaku

Fall Leaves

Fall Photographs by Christopher Griffith

In my work at the library, I often come across wonderful books that would normally be off my radar.  One such find is Fall Photographs by Christopher Griffith (2004).  I am captivated by Griffith’s technique of photographing fall leaves against a black background.  He captures the intricacy of the veins and surface details of each leaf.  The photographs are stunning.

It is more difficult than you would think to photograph leaves against a black background.  Here are my first attempts:

Fall leaf just beginning to turn

Red maple leaf suspended above backdrop

Pin-Oak leaf

Oak leaf

Backlit leaf

Leaking Stars

Light leaking through the hayloft siding

“The hay in the loft
misses the night sky,
so the old roof
leaks a few stars.”
     — Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser, Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry

Our hayloft is an atmospheric space, especially empty of hay, as it is these days.  The roof on our old barn has been replaced and is now water-tight.  But the siding still leaks in pinpoints of light.