After a windy night, the forest is looking decidedly threadbare in its coat of many colors, illuminated each time the sun finds a hole in the clouds.
fall foliage
One degree above freezing and very still. I add my breath to the ground fog rising through yellow leaves into the sunlight.
A flat white sky crossed by a crow. Woods’-edge chipmunks in a chipping contest. The color.
The pleasing monotony of a cold autumn rain, drowning out all other sound except for a low throbbing in the distance. Leaves fall drunkenly, careening this way and that.
Windy and cold. In the wall of leaves at the woods’ edge, the first few fragments of what will be my winter sky.
Half an hour past sunrise and the birds are quiet. All along the woods’ edge, yellow leaves are falling by ones and twos. The smell of burning plastic.
Every morning more yellow in the woods. What’s happening while we sleep? An unseen full moon. Migrant thrushes descending through the clouds at dawn.
Cold wind and rain, belied by all the cheerful yellow starting to move from the goldenrod up into the trees at the woods’ edge.
Half an hour past sunrise, the top of the tall tulip poplar turns gold. But I notice that yellow leaves continue down the tree. One sails out into the goldenrod.
Crystal-clear and cold: autumn’s first visit. A breeze sorting through the walnut leaves, a few of which are already yellow.
Drizzle in the wind even as the sky brightens. Small patches of blue appear and disappear. A yellow leaf spirals down into the yard.
A lull in the rains. The transition from a watercolor world to pencil-brown and charcoal-gray is nearly complete.
Cold sunrise. The green hippogriff of a lilac just starting to yellow. Dry leaves whispering of deer in heat.
Late in rising, I’m grateful to the oaks for still holding leaves—I don’t need sunglasses. My brother texts: Savannah sparrows in the field!