Today I found the First Leaf of Fall

jparadisirn
I found the first leaf of fall (2009) photo: JParadisi
I found the first leaf of fall (2009) photo: JParadisi
Autumn Movement
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Carl Sandburg (1918)
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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. 

 
Nothing Gold Can Stay
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Robert Frost (1923)
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Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Published by jparadisirn

JParadisi RN, OCN emeritus, is a multidisciplinary artist with a focus in painting and writing. Her paintings and short stories have been published nationally. She has exhibited artwork in galleries throughout the Pacific Northwest. Julianna is a frequent contributor to Off The Charts, the blog of the American Journal of Nursing as a blogger and illustrator.

2 Comments

  1. I have come back to this Leaf a number of times as well as Carl Sandburg’s comment and the Robert Frost poem. Concrete reminders of the season’s passing one to another and filling me with melancholy. Here in N.E. Nebraska the song birds have migrated and there is little except the whirring cicadia and the crickets to fill the vacuume except a few hawks riding the air currents high above the farm. Black Walnuts drop to the ground driving the resident squirrel frantic to harvest. To contemplate this season’s change is to think about dormant vegetation, fallow land, the onset of winter and my own mortality. Then the leaf glimmers gold and I find a breath filled with thanksgiving and grab for the ‘ring of gold’. Leaf on, Mary Haas.

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