Maples Giving Forth Light

“The maples give forth light, like closer suns.  The oaks glow with garnet fire, and all the thickets blaze with scarlets and pale gold and cinnamon.   It is like the music of a trumpet.”
— Gladys Tabor, Stillmeadow Daybook

Glowing maple leaves, November

“The one red leaf, the last of its clan,
That dances as often as dance it can.”
—  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, from “Christobel”

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Little Daily Miracles

“What is the meaning of life? . . . a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years.  The great revelation had never come.  The great revelation perhaps never did come.  Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark.”  —  Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

Clouds are always a miracle.

October, Month of Falling Leaves

From A Child’s Calendar by John Updike

October
by John Updike

The  month is amber,
Gold, and brown.
Blue ghosts of smoke
Float through the town.

Great V’s of geese
Honk overhead,
And maples turn
A fiery red.

Frost bites the lawn,
The stars are slits
In a black cat’s eye
Before she spits.

At last, small witches,
Goblins, hags,
And pirates armed
With paper bags.

Their costumes hinged
On safety pins,
Go haunt a night
Of pumpkin grins.

Multi-colored maple leaf

Watercolor sketch of maple leaf

Watercolor sketch of maple leaf

 

Mid-October

Watercolor sketch of maple leaf

Another watercolor sketch of maple leaf

Mid-October
by David Budbill, from Moment to Moment: Poems of a Mountain Recluse

Almost all the leaves
are down.  Rain.

Clouds make a fog
just above the trees.

The world colder
more empty every day.

My favorite
time of year.

Without Regret

Watercolor sketch of fallen maple leaves

“When I rise up
let me rise up joyful
like a bird.

When I fall
let me fall without regret
like a leaf.”
     — Wendell Berry, from “Prayers and Sayings of the Made Farmer”

 

Early Birds

“An hour in the morning is worth two in the afternoon.”
— attributed to William Corbett

We all know about time’s relativity. I dedicate this post to all the morning people.  You know who you are.

Wings Like Green Moths

“They are nearly two inches long by one-half inch wide, with veined inner edges to the wings like green moths, ready to bear off their seeds.”
— Henry David Thoreau, Faith in a Seed

Watercolor sketch of maple leaves and seeds

“In all our maples, a thin membrane, in appearance much like an insect’s wing, grows over and around the seed while the latter is being developed within its base. . . . In other words, a beautiful thin sack is woven around the seed, with a handle to it such as the wind can take hold of and it is then committed to the wind, expressly that it may transport the seed and extend the range of the species, and this it does as effectually as when seeds are sent by mail in a different kind of sack from the Patent Office.”
— Henry David Thoreau, Faith in a Seed