By a clumsy hand, a color rendition of a season passing

November 24, 2008
New York City

It’s too late to have the green, yellow, orange, red, purple, and the brown of the fall season. The last mottled leaf has been shed by the trees as autumn fades to give way to the coming winter. The cold is now a notch lower than last week’s temperature dip. Only some fallen leaves roll down the sidewalk; a few decay with the debris on the ground’s icy permafrost close to the street curve.

I feel I didn’t have enough of the dazzling color changes of fall this year. The trees are suddenly bare in hibernation, concluding the foliage’s annual shedding. I don’t hear the whisper of the summer leaves anymore— only the twigs and branches of maple trees shudder with the breeze.

Warding off the bite of the chilly air, the little chestnut sparrows may silently huddle under the bush somewhere. Trees stand still like the rigid black fence of a leaf-laden path in Central Park. There is the scent of moist earth after a light drizzle. Soft sunshine peers through the woods and touch the sere leaves on the pavement. The morning dove which wakes me up at dawn is gone.

Have you tried painting a picture of the awesome fall season the way you see it etched in your mind? Even if I don’t know how, let me show you the colors. Look at the loud amorphous picture I have below. It shows that gifted artists, unlike me, can paint autumn much better. And nature, if left alone, makes the season infinitely grand, and pleasing to remember.(Photo Credits: FernandoSanchez(OnandOf); Lawatha) =0=

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By a clumsy hand, a color rendition of a season passing

November 24, 2008
New York City

It’s too late to have the green, yellow, orange, red, purple, and the brown of the fall season. The last mottled leaf has been shed by the trees as autumn fades to give way to the coming winter. The cold is now a notch lower than last week’s temperature dip. Only some fallen leaves roll down the sidewalk; a few decay with the debris on the ground’s icy permafrost close to the street curve.

I feel I didn’t have enough of the dazzling color changes of fall this year. The trees are suddenly bare in hibernation, concluding the foliage’s annual shedding. I don’t hear the whisper of the summer leaves anymore— only the twigs and branches of maple trees shudder with the breeze.

Warding off the bite of the chilly air, the little chestnut sparrows may silently huddle under the bush somewhere. Trees stand still like the rigid black fence of a leaf-laden path in Central Park. There is the scent of moist earth after a light drizzle. Soft sunshine peers through the woods and touch the sere leaves on the pavement. The morning dove which wakes me up at dawn is gone.

Have you tried painting a picture of the awesome fall season the way you see it etched in your mind? Even if I don’t know how, let me show you the colors. Look at the loud amorphous picture I have below. It shows that gifted artists, unlike me, can paint autumn much better. And nature, if left alone, makes the season infinitely grand, and pleasing to remember.(Photo Credits: FernandoSanchez(OnandOf); Lawatha) =0=

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A. J. Kilmer’s "A poem as lovely as a tree"

TREES

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

Alfred Joyce Kilmer
A Catholic American poet, writer and lecturer born in New Brunswick, N.J. and educated at Rutgers College and Columbia (B.A., 1908,) Alfred Joyce Kilmer lived from December 6, 1886 to July 30, 1918. His most famous poem “Trees,” was published in Trees and Other Poems (1914.) He served in the military and was deployed in Europe during the World War I.

When the United States involved itself in war, in 1917, Alfred Joyce Kilmer, in an expression of patriotic duty, joined the Seventh Regiment of the New York National Guard. While on a military mission in France, he was killed by a fatal sniper’s bullet at a young age of 31, leaving behind his wife Aline Murray and five children. Posthumously, he was awarded the Coix de Guerre (Cross of War) by the French Republic for his valor.

In North Carolina, a place Kilmer never visited, he was honored with the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest, a protective reserve of ancient trees, one of the few of its kind in North America. Upon his death, he was interred in the Oise-Aisne Cemetery, Fere-en-Tardenois, France. Source: Alfred Joyce Kilmer and His Memorial Forest by Steve Nix (About.com)

There is a bit of nostalgia reading A. J. Kilmer’s poem “Trees.” At this time of the year when autumn progresses in full season, this piece of vintage literature brings a special resonance. The poem with its conservative tone and rhyme seems sentimental and ancient to the reading taste of the present generation, but look at the changing trees mimicking the flowers in the photo. They are the same radiant trees reaching for the sky that a nature-beholder from Brunswick, New Jersey paid tribute to about a century ago. Like a God-believing outdoorsman of this day, he is more relevant now with the environmental movement and the effort to save the plants and trees of the planet. (Photo Credits: dabadoo; USFS; tobi et. al) =0=

Beholding the Autumn Season

“The foliage has been losing its freshness through the month of August, and here and there a yellow leaf shows itself like the first gray hair amidst the locks of a beauty who has seen one season too many.” ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

October gave a party;
The leaves by hundreds came –
The Chestnuts, Oaks, and Maples,
And leaves of every name.
The Sunshine spread a carpet,
And everything was grand,
Miss Weather led the dancing,
Professor Wind the band.
~George Cooper, “October’s Party”