Cloudy and cold. Gusts of wind try on bespoke garments of yellow leaves. The hornets are still flying, tough as the nails in their abdomens.
fall foliage
The neighbor’s leaf blower, that insect whine. I worry about the oaks that still have leaves—snow is coming, the kind that breaks limbs.
Hoarfrost costumes the yard, sparkling in the sun for a few minutes of glory. Oaks that looked brown under clouds glow orange and red again.
The stream’s dark thread. A jay pierces it with his bill three times. The scarlet oak I planted so long ago is flying all its red flags.
Rain past, the sky brightens. Great crowds of oak leaves are taking the plunge. A freight train whistles an almost perfect minor chord.
The red and scarlet oaks have finally turned their namesake colors, and the whole ridge shines like a fresh gut pile in the sun.
A squirrel on an oak limb freezes in alarm at the figure passing underneath, that blaze-orange cap a color no longer found in the trees.
Cold and mostly clear. A pileated woodpecker riot of one vents its fury in a glowing, golden canopy of chestnut oaks.
The barberry beside the stream is turning from the inside out: under a green cloak, salmon pink, blood-red beads, the hurdy-gurdy of a wren.
Recovering from a fever, I sit in strong sunlight with nature’s grand spectacle of slow death and decay spread out before me.
Rainy and dark, with a steady, fluttering fall of leaves. A freight train rumbling up the valley is the only thing audible over the rain.
Clear and still. The witch hazel in the garden has just opened its first blooms, spidery petals a far purer yellow than the curling leaves.
Gusty winds. The sun appears several times a minute to light up the forest, which today is noticeably more open, yellower, more ablaze.
Another overcast morning. I can see yellow leaves falling way off in the woods like unschooled fish spiralling into the depths.