Cold and clear. Half the trees on the ridge are bare now, leaving narrow, blue windows all along the crest for the sun to pour through.
fall foliage
Cloudy and brisk; the woods are full of falling leaves. A sharp-shinned hawk flaps and glides just above the treetops, heading south.
The fluting of geese from somewhere above the clouds. A bowhunter dressed in green camouflage walks out of the autumn woods.
Every morning more shards of ridge-top sky are visible through the trees. In the black birch’s yellow crown, yellow-rumped warblers.
With every gust of wind, a mob of yellow leaves comes swirling out over the meadow. From just inside the woods’ edge, the crash of a limb.
Silent as a thief, this sun climbing through the trees. The fog lifted an hour ago, but steam still rises from the yellow leaves.
A wood pewee calls from the edge of the meadow. The air has turned autumnal. The sun comes out and doubles the number of yellow leaves.
The soft clatter of oak leaves on their way to the ground. Dull thumps as a pileated woodpecker excavates a hole, crest like a flaming axe.
A breeze carries leaves from the dark woods to spiral down into the sunlit yard. A deer feeds on the lilac—the only remaining greenery.
The yard is white with the first frost, prostrate myrtle and stiltgrass leaves outlined as if in chalk. Leaves spiral down in the still air.
Most of the maples have dropped their leaves since I was last on the porch, but the towhee’s breast still flickers rust-red in the lilac.
Sunlight filtered through thin clouds—it’s almost spring-like, apart from the yellow leaves, the goldenrod, a white-throated sparrow’s song.
The trees at the edge of the woods are now an almost even mix of green and yellow leaves—until the sun comes out and turns them all to gold.
Clumps of snow still dot the crowns of oaks—small clouds, a rain of angelic hats. Flaming orange and red leaves rattle in the wind.