Posts
In a vacant lot just a half block from my house, there lives one of the most beautiful trees I've ever met. I'd buy this lot for the tree. I tried to get some pictures of it, but it's so huge and lovely, the camera can't seem to catch it. Garrison Keillor just did a "News from Lake Wobegon" segment about a group of crazies that follow autumn from Canada down through the southern states to Argentina to worship "the golden leaves". I could join them today. Who was it that called autumn "the second spring" where every tree is a bloom? I pulled in a couple of tree/autumn poems by Robert Frost for this post. I wish I was on my back in a hammock reading these poems looking up at the foliage, but we can all pretend right?
The Vantage Point
If tired of trees I seek again mankind,
Well I know where to hie me--in the dawn,
To a slope where the cattle keep the lawn.
There amid lolling juniper reclined,
Myself unseen, I see in white defined
Far off the homes of men, and farther still,
The graves of men on an opposing hill,
Living or dead, whichever are to mind.
And if by noon I have too much of these,
I have but to turn on my arm, and lo,
The sun-burned hillside sets my face aglow,
My breathing shakes the bluet like a breeze,
I smell the earth, I smell the bruisèd plant,
I look into the crater of the ant.
October
O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow's wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes' sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost--
For the grapes' sake along the wall.
4 comments:
Robert Frost and the pictures. Truly captures autumn. I too love this season.
Ain't nothing like a New England fall. There's a reason Frost hails from here.
Although your big tree is truly stunning.
Anyway, you ought to come see. Maybe next year ...
...if anybody ever cuts down that tree...
I wish I was on my back in the hammock asleep....although I would enjoy the tree on my way down :)
Post a Comment