Autumn leaves #phenology

It is a pensive, cloudy morning. Summer's leaves leap from the only home they've ever known onto the backs of passing winds. Their rides will be brief but, oh, so exhilarating! Freedom comes rarely for them. It will be eons before they get this thrill again. First, they must spend Winters and many seasons following as they reshape and return to their source. Only then can their journey again become a climb to reach for the heavens.

leaving home

Photo by J. Harrington

destination unknown

Photo by J. Harrington

journey interrupted

Photo by J. Harrington

Wish them timely, uninterrupted journeys and godspeed on their return.

                     Immortal Autumn

By Archibald MacLeish

I speak this poem now with grave and level voice   

In praise of autumn, of the far-horn-winding fall.

I praise the flower-barren fields, the clouds, the tall   

Unanswering branches where the wind makes sullen noise.

I praise the fall: it is the human season.

                                                                  Now

No more the foreign sun does meddle at our earth,   

Enforce the green and bring the fallow land to birth,   

Nor winter yet weigh all with silence the pine bough,

But now in autumn with the black and outcast crows   

Share we the spacious world: the whispering year is gone:   

There is more room to live now: the once secret dawn   

Comes late by daylight and the dark unguarded goes.

Between the mutinous brave burning of the leaves   

And winter’s covering of our hearts with his deep snow   

We are alone: there are no evening birds: we know   

The naked moon: the tame stars circle at our eaves.

It is the human season. On this sterile air

Do words outcarry breath: the sound goes on and on.   

I hear a dead man’s cry from autumn long since gone.

I cry to you beyond upon this bitter air.

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