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In Celebration of Fall
~ moments of detached languor ~
Though highway noises encroach as winds change direction, quiet oak and maple leaves fall like moments of detached languor. Wading through ramparts of ochre and gold — it is late autumn after all, but unseasonably cold — I wander with a tractable pace in the woods: stop at a bend in the brook where horsetails grow, rest on a rotting log: watch and absorb as a piece of dry bread soaks up broth, make artless sketches in a pocket book — the strokes might as well be words — to be integrated into a poem, a reflection, later when everything sleeps. The idea that painting a picture is akin to composing a poem fills me with delight. Just as Frida Kahlo might’ve sniffed out nuances of pigments with that grandest of spirits I, a humble pilgrim, attempt with words.
A massive puddle by the winding leaf-strewn trail is barely frozen over: one would never know if its surface did not resemble a coat of fragile, still, frosty feathers. How can dainty ripples freeze mid-motion? Water molecules at play, bouncing, ramming each other, dashing about governed by immutable dictates etched in stone… Then an inevitable cold descends bringing a soporific message and there is no fighting it, a choreography of diminishing energy enters limbo, buoyed by air bubbles…The wafer thin sheet is curiously covered with domes where they attempted a futile escape. In a small opening I…
