I wake up to leaves from the redbud tree, the hackberry and the white mulberry tree on the lawn where I raked yesterday. Today, I will just look and listen. When I am sitting on the porch, I hear two osage fruits fall into the open palms of the Lenten roses near the west fence. Our five koi lie low on the bottom of the pond. Pale grape leaves streak the honeysuckle hedge. Even though the hummingbird food slowly disappears, it seems that the bees are the only ones drinking. Drifts of New England asters are still open, one white bindweed has blossomed near the trellis, and Ruby’s white phlox have a few new flowers. All the hydrangea flower clusters are brittle and dusky. All the finches at the feeders have lost their gold.
Into the woods, the canopy opening in front of me: Two black walnut trees are bare. Zigzag goldenrod and all the asters maybe half gone; tattered leafcup; smartweed blanched by frost with only a few red flower nubs left; drifts of snakeroot to seed, brown and gray; deep patches of goldenrod all rusted, flowers and leaves matching now; wood nettle spotted, drooping; wingstem and ironweed all twisted, sagging, brittle; climbing bittersweet undressed, bright; the pale underside of blackberry leaves up in the warm east wind; one buffeted white cabbage butterfly; one downy woodpecker call; one buzzard circling; crickets steady and high in the undergrowth.
The mottled land reflects the motion of the sky, tells the rising of Orion up into the night, this leaf following red Antares, that leaf prophesying Betelgeuse. Open bittersweet along the path uncovers the Milky Way above me. Myopia takes everything in hand. In the glow of ripeness, the stars and the Ursids of October fall around me. Everything is here. All of the facts are in. I need look no further than the grass for Taurus and the Pleiades.
Bill Felker