Yellow world

Indigenous sugar maples have morphed green

summer sails into a glowing yellow canopy top and

side-lit by a high blue October day intent on exhibiting

intensity and offering a pilgrim, perhaps, a life lesson or two:

Is this yellow caution, a warning of the impending seasonal

change and mind-numbing grey of Ohio’s winter?;

or

perhaps product of an abundance of light made available

to us here on low-humidity, high barometric fall days

that offer us good reason to be mindful?;

or

merely the musings of the Earth Mother growing yet another

project starting with transforming canvases from insect-eaten and squirrel-harvested earth tones

to colors shifted to the yellow end of the spectrum, providing trekkers ambient light even here in the shadowed north, sitting among spent and decaying refugees, losing hue daily

leaving their still-bright selves amid still-warm breezes to offer this attentive time to smell rich wood smoke and consider the significance of the Fall.

Tom Schaefer

October 2009

Today’s elder idea:

In the name of the Bee,

and of the Blossom,

and of the Breeze. Amen.

Emily Dickinson