Like a joy on the heart of a sorrow,
The sunset hangs on a cloud;
A golden storm of glittering sheaves,
Of fair and frail and fluttering leaves,
The wild wind blows in a cloud.
Hark to a voice that is calling
To my heart in the voice of the wind:
My heart is weary and sad and alone,
For its dreams like the fluttering leaves have gone,
And why should I stay behind?
Golden storm of fluttering leaves, weary heart, wind's sorrowful call — both bright and sad
All day I have watched the purple vine leaves
Fall into the water.
And now in the moonlight they still fall.
But each leaf is fringed with silver.
Endless falling leaves fringed with silver in moonlight — decay made luminous and beautiful
Autumn is the season
when the leaves,
fall to the ground.
As I fall to the ground,
Because of autumn.
Autumn doesn't stay for ever,
I loved autumn,
she was,
the love of my life,
but she went,
and just left,
a tree with out leaves,
Behind.
Falling leaves and a leafless tree mirror the quiet grief of a love gone
one at a time
the yellow leaves drift
to the ground
Yellow leaves drifting down one at a time — a gentle, lonely image of letting go
Now Autumn's fire burns slowly along the woods,
And day by day the dead leaves fall and melt,
And night by night the monitory blast
Wails in the key-hold, telling how it pass'd
O'er empty fields, or upland solitudes,
Or grim wide wave; and now the power is felt
Of melancholy, tenderer in its moods
Than any joy indulgent summer dealt.
Dear friends, together in the glimmering eve,
Pensive and glad, with tones that recognise
The soft invisible dew in each one's eyes,
It may be, somewhat thus we shall have leave
To walk with memory,--when distant lies
Poor Earth, where we were wont to live and grieve.
Dead leaves fall day by day while friends share a pensive, glimmering twilight of tender melancholy
THE green elm with the one great bough of gold
Lets leaves into the grass slip, one by one,--
The short hill grass, the mushrooms small milk-white,
Harebell and scabious and tormentil,
That blackberry and gorse, in dew and sun,
Bow down to; and the wind travels too light
To shake the fallen birch leaves from the fern;
The gossamers wander at their own will.
At heavier steps than birds' the squirrels scold.
The rich scene has grown fresh again and new
As Spring and to the touch is not more cool
Than it is warm to the gaze; and now I might
As happy be as earth is beautiful,
Were I some other or with earth could turn
In alternation of violet and rose,
Harebell and snowdrop, at their season due,
One great golden bough lets leaves slip one by one, warmth and quiet melancholy held together
Autumn comes laden with her ripened load
Of fruitage and so scatters them abroad
That each fern-smothered heath and mole-hill waste
Are black with bramble berries--where in haste
The chubby urchins from the village hie
To feast them there, stained with the purple dye;
While painted woods around my rambles be
In draperies worthy of eternity.
Yet will the leaves soon patter on the ground,
And death's deaf voice awake at every sound:
One drops--then others--and the last that fell
Rings for those left behind their passing bell.
Thus memory every where her tidings brings
How sad death robs us of life's dearest things.
Berries and painted woods glow bright, yet leaves pattering down ring death's quiet bell
Falling from the tree
The troubles from this year
Are dying
Fading
Falling out of memory
Soon they'll be dead
Forgotten
Unable to reach us
Or haunt us
As we prepare for a new day
A new month
A new year
A new age.
But I shall still remember
The roses you gave me
Last spring
Falling leaves carry the year's troubles away while tender memories of roses and rain stay bright
‘WHERE shall we go for our garlands glad
At the falling of the year,
When the burnt-up banks are yellow and sad,
When the boughs are yellow and sere?
Where are the old ones that once we had,
And when are the new ones near?
What shall we do for our garlands glad
At the falling of the year?’
‘Child! can I tell where the garlands go?
Can I say where the lost leaves veer
On the brown-burnt banks, when the wild winds blow,
When they drift through the dead-wood drear?
Girl! when the garlands of next year glow,
You may gather again, my dear—
But I go where the last year’s lost leaves go
At the falling of the year.’
Falling leaves mirror the year's quiet farewell, tender with a child's hope and an elder's gentle sadness
Sudden pain of earth
I hear in the fallen leaf.
"Life's autumn," I cry.
A single fallen leaf carries the earth's soft ache, naming life's autumn with bittersweet clarity
When the leaves fall off the trees
Everybody walks on them :
Once they had a time of ease
High above, and every breeze
Used to stay and talk to them.
Then they were so debonair
As they fluttered up and down ;
Dancing in the sunny air,
Dancing without knowing there
Was a gutter in the town.
Now they have no place at all !
All the home that they can find
Is a gutter by a wall.
And the wind that waits their fall
Is an apache of a wind.
Leaves that once danced in bright air now drift into gutters, a sad song of how beauty falls
I shall remember only these leaves falling
Small and incessant in the still air,
Yellow leaves on the dark green water resting
And the marble Venus there--
Is she pointing to her breasts or trying to hide them?
There is no god to care.
The colonnade curves close to the leaf-strewn water
And its reflection seems
Lost in the mass of leaves and unavailing
As a dream lost among dreams;
The colonnade curves close to the leaf-strewn water
A dream lost among dreams.
Yellow leaves on dark water and a marble Venus hold autumn's fading brightness in dreamlike stillness
Leaves fall like words
on a page, punctuations
in time.
Summers passing, flights
of geese, the
loosening of ties.
Orange ambiguity
leaf and butterfly
fluttering.
One to fall, crinkle
and wither, the other
freedom and flight.
Leaves and butterflies flutter through orange ambiguity, catching both decay and the bright freedom of letting go
Alive. Living. Breathing. Feeling.
Time. Passing. Ageing. Dreading.
Endless thoughts as a chill wind passes by
Sending shivers down his worn out spine
Reds, oranges, and yellows spread throughout village
The scenery, a testament to time and its passage
Frail leaves fall from trees once abundant with greenery
The colors of autumn behold a beautiful yet passing scenery
The boy of summer heat now stands in the autumn cold
No longer a boy but a man slowly growing old
Time has robbed him of his vigor and youth
Now only waiting for the inevitable truth
Falling leaves mirror a man aging, bright autumn colors shadowed by passing time
I watch the leaves
Falling from the trees,
Which ends
A season;
Ends a time,
Good or bad;
But it ends.
I wonder,
As the leaves fall,
Have I done everything
I needed to do?
It doesn’t help
That the leaves keep falling
And the air turns freezing.
A day passed by,
One leaf or two
Watching leaves fall prompts gentle self-questioning and quiet gratitude
When wind scatters leaves,
brown oak, golden poplar,
and clouds drift across half moon
illuminated like neon.
memories shiver
chills up the spine.
Wind-scattered leaves and a neon half-moon bring a bittersweet shiver of memory
The thin gold of the sun lies slanting on the hill;
In the sorrowful greys and muffled violets of the old orchard
A group of girls are quietly gathering apples.
Through the mingled gloom and green they scarcely speak at all,
And their broken voices rise and fall unutterably sad.
There are no birds,
And the goldenrod is gone.
And a child calls out, far away, across the autumn twilight;
And the sad grey of the dusk grows slowly deeper,
And all the world seems old!
Slanting gold light over an old orchard holds autumn's muted, elegiac sorrow
The plane leaves
fall black and wet
on the lawn;
The cloud sheaves
in heaven's fields set
droop and are drawn
in falling seeds of rain;
the seed of heaven
on my face
falling--I hear again
like echoes even
that softly pace
Heaven's muffled floor,
the winds that tread
out all the grain
of tears, the store
Black wet leaves and soft rain turn autumn grief into heaven's quiet harvest
Wednesday Morning
The cold air piercing my lungs
The copper-coloured leaves,
As kamikaze pilots,
Plummer into the green sea.
The moon,
Why are you out?
You come without warning
To watch over us
Here one minute, gone in another.
The iced autumn winds
Prickling,
Tingling at my bare limbs
Asserting its presence.
The sunlight tickling,
Teasing,
Copper leaves dive like kamikaze pilots while a watchful moon heightens the bright, chilling ache
As I crossed over the bridge of Ariwarano Narikira,
I saw that the waters were purple
With the floating leaves of maples.
Maple leaves turn the water purple — fleeting autumn beauty held in a single still moment
The Seine flows out of the mist
And into the mist again;
The trees lean over the water,
The small leaves fall like rain.
The leaves fall patiently,
Nothing remembers or grieves;
The river takes to the sea
The yellow drift of the leaves.
Milky and cold is the air,
The leaves float with the stream,
The river comes out of a sleep
And goes away in a dream.
Small leaves fall like rain into a misty river, patient and bright with quiet letting go
First leaf of fall
as temperatures drop ,
letter from home.
A single leaf and dropping temperatures stir a soft homesick ache, brief and luminous
Listen, the damp leaves on the walks are blowing
With a ghost of sound;
Is it a fog or is it a rain dripping
From the low trees to the ground?
If I had gone before, I could have remembered
Lilacs and green after-noons of May;
I chose to wait, I chose to hear from autumn
Whatever she has to say.
Damp leaves and fog, choosing to hear autumn's voice instead of mourning spring
Listen . . .
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall.
Frost-crisp leaves falling like passing ghosts — bright in sound, sad in what they leave
The world is tired, the year is old,
The fading leaves are glad to die,
The wind goes shivering with cold
Where the brown reeds are dry.
Our love is dying like the grass,
And we who kissed grow coldly kind,
Half glad to see our old love pass
Like leaves along the wind.
Fading leaves glad to die mirror a love ending quietly, half glad, half grieving
the last to go
in late autumn twilight
slender birch
A lone birch in late twilight holding its last leaf — bittersweet, luminous letting go
gold-coral leaves
too rich and transient
to hold this autumn day
loud shots of hunters
I shrink for graceful deer
radios shoot the sky
cold - death of sweaty yellow heat
reaches to snow
sun pales vanishes
sap tree life still
kicking against
frost
Gold-coral leaves too rich to hold, sharpened by frost and gunshots — bright beauty, quiet dread
autumn clouds
the little tick before
each petal falls
The little tick before each petal falls — a hushed, glowing pause before loss
Bouncing Bass lines.
Clouds wave over the sky like an ocean.
The orange trees look so dull.
But the filter my eyes see through is so vivid.
Traveling roads already ridden.
Last times I'll see the tunnels of vegetation.
As the clock strikes six on the year i reflect as a mirror does.
Autumn air so fresh handpicked from the highest garden.
Life is good.
Bouncing bass lines.
Vivid orange trees and fresh air, life is good amid quiet seasonal change
I CRIED over beautiful things knowing no beautiful thing
lasts.
The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of
the copper sunburned woman, the mother of the
year, the taker of seeds.
The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full
of holes, new beautiful things come in the first spit
of snow on the northwest wind, and the old things
go, not one lasts.
Grieves beautiful things that never last as the wind tears autumn's colors away
The leaves flowing in the wind
Displaying their green elegance
Like a shard of colored glass
They glisten like stars in the sunlight
Only to be brought down
By the winds solemn touch
Leaves glisten like glass in sunlight before the wind gently brings them down
Gold of a ripe oat straw, gold of a southwest moon,
Canada thistle blue and flimmering larkspur blue,
Tomatoes shining in the October sun with red hearts,
Shining five and six in a row on a wooden fence.
Why do you keep wishes on your faces all day long,
Wishes like women with half-forgotten lovers going to
new cities?
What is there for you in the birds, the birds, the birds,
crying down on the north wind in September, acres
of birds spotting the air going south?
Is there something finished? And some new beginning
on the way?
Ripe golden harvest and birds going south, asking if something's finished or just beginning
Michael walks in autumn leaves
Rustling leaves and fading grasses,
And his little music-box
Tinkles faintly as he passes.
It's a gay and jaunty tune
If the hands that play were clever:
Michael plays it like a dirge,
Moaning on and on forever.
While his happy eyes grow big,
Big and innocent and soulful.
Wistful, halting little notes
Rise, unutterably doleful,
Telling of all childish griefs —
Baffled babies sob forsaken,
Birds fly off and bubbles burst,
Kittens sleep and will not waken.
A child rustling through autumn leaves, glad yet heard by others as a dirge of tears
What do you mean
by knife, by wind?
The bluest sky below the wash
of sunset pink, delectable
as a slice of blue fruit riding
the horizon’s blade.
Half a moon over the barn.
The field of goldenrod fuzz
gathering its sparrows, brown
into brown, poor Sam Peabody
as lamentable as ever:
a song that catches in the middle
like a shirt on a thorn.
The wind dying,
& the color in the trees
darkening like dried blood.
Dusk swallows the goldenrod field and sparrows, wind dying as trees darken
an empty space is still data
my phone reminds me
no space is truly empty
a falling leaf reminds me
the time of long shadows
has come ‘round again
cedar waxwings whistle
through bare branches
the low sun catches on wings
in lieu of leaves
rests in a red oak
undressing in the wind
and flickers like an angel
resisting temptation
to follow the leaves down
spinning spiralling
Long shadows, falling leaves and low sun where letting go becomes a quiet brightness
Is it a dragonfly or a maple leaf
That settles softly down upon the water ?
A dragonfly or maple leaf settles softly on still water, the haze of a fading season