a poem for your sunday (a day late)

October Maples, Portland

The leaves, though little time they have to live,

Were never so unfallen as today,

And seem to yield through a rustled sieve

The very light from which time fell away.

A showered fire we thought forever lost

Redeems the air.  Where friends in passing meet,

They parley in the tongues of Pentecost.

Gold ranks of temples flank the dazzled street.

It is a light of maples, and will go;

But not before it washes eye and brain

With such a tincture, such a sanguine glow

As cannot fail to leave a lasting stain.

So Mary's laundered mantle (in the tale

Which, like all pretty tales, may still be true),

Spread on the rosemary-bush, so drenched the pale

Slight blooms in its irradiated hue,

They could not choose but to return in blue.

--Richard Wilbur

The picture above is from last October; that flaming maple outside my bedroom window still flames this year with an inward creeping orange. The brilliant first rays of the rising sun touch the top of the tree just where the leaves begin to change and then slide down the trunk throughout the day.  We are dazzled by the glow.  

This October is a noisy blur, far from the patient, silent, intentional October of last year.  But the trees still change in their slow, stolid way.  

Wishing you peace, friends.