To what must fall

November 25, 1986

Now breezy autumn skies have lifted, ballet fashion, leaves whose shades outbrighten gems and rainbows. Now the match, remembrance, lights our fires laid for color's second burning. We are reconciled to what must fall (leaves, snow), and what lifts up (books, fire), and know this change compensative with winter -- with ice-of-silver days, with nights' long wind, with trusting snowflakes, falling, swirling down ... and landing gently either here or there, contented with the way the world's compiled, and well aware that seasons keep on turning.