Tag Archives: Autumn

Carol is hosting the round-up at http://carolwscorner.blogspot.com/

Happy Thanksgiving! Wherever and however you celebrated this special day for recalling our blessings, I hope your day was as nourishing to your poet-spirit as it was to your body!

Inasmuch as Thanksgiving might be considered the grande finale of the autumn holidays (at least in areas of the country that have seasonal vegetation), here is the third of the three autumn photo-poems I composed in response to Carol V.’s “Autumn Palette” gallery initiative.

Inasmuch, too, as Thanksgiving is one of our most cherished National family holidays, which conjures up thoughts and images of “home,” the backstory to this photo reminds me of the parallel aphoristic  truth: “The grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence.”

Our family history includes annual Fall foliage forages to places miles away in search of the most breathtaking autumn nature sites. What is so amazing about the scenery in the photo-poem is that it was found in a totally unexpected place…right in our own backyard. A wooded backyard to which no back door opens…A wooded backyard, quite frankly, into which we typically do not enter or look. (Note. I had to invent a back door for the last line of the poem:)

But because some work needed to be done on the side of the house, my husband glanced to the back, and had his breath taken away. Not that the scenery was as spectacular as that photographed on one of the Fall foliage forages miles and miles away to a lakeside state park…No, but this was “our woods” that were ablaze with a variety of colors. And even though we hadn’t planted the trees which so gifted us, still, these trees were “ours,” and like a child who objectively might not be as good looking or as smart as someone else’s child, that child is loved because it’s yours…Ergo:

The grass is not necessarily greener, nor the leaves more brilliantly colored, on the other side of the fence….

And when the opposite is true, which objectively it often is, there’s something to be said for appreciating what is ours, even while aspiring for what truly is greener or more brilliant. Will we continue Fall foliage foraging? You bet! Will we remember to look for beauty in our own backyard, also? I certainly hope so!

Thank God we live in a land of options. May we exercise those options with thanks in our heart for all those servicemen and servicewomen who, along with their families, are sacrificing in the service of our freedoms. God bless America!

Tricia is hosting the round-up: http://missrumphiuseffect.blogspot.com/

In response to Carol V.’s Autumn Palette poetry-photo invitation, I pondered this photo taken by my husband…

Now, please don’t peek below…If you were responding to this photo in poem, what words does this image inspire from you? I’d love to know!… As for me…

….Reflecting on the reflection, I reflected on  Narcissus, reflecting that before camera-produced selfies, there were the nature-made selfies, courtesy of water…..and voila! a photo-poem:

Good thing that the trees are smarter and more humble than Narcissus. I’m glad they don’t get  infatuated with themselves; don’t topple into the water.

Without uprooting or taking leave of  themselves, what a splash of color they add to the water, without subtracting any beauty or diminishing any hue from what reaches above–into the heavens.

In reflecting on that truth, I totally agree with Joyce Kilmer…”I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree…Poems are made by fools like me, but only God can make a tree.” Amen!

Upon further reflection, truly, trees are ten times ten times more than twice-tremendous….