No Words

A Ribbon of Moonlight

"The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,

The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,...

I memorized the words of Alfred Noyes "The Highwayman when I was in my early teens, not because of the romance of the poem but because of the images that filled my mind inspired by the words from these first two lines.

Tonight the wind gallops above the trees. Its own song nearly blotting out the intermitent calls of the katydid. Clouds hurry now ahead of the wind, racing across the face of that ghostly moon.

October Rain

Long awaited rain has arrived today, refreshing the garden and washing our world. I stand on the deck watching leaves swirl from the trees and letting the rain wash my spirit.

“I am sure it is a great mistake always to know enough to go in when it rains.
One may keep snug and dry by such knowledge,
but one misses a world of loveliness.”

- Adeline Knapp

Sunshine on a Cloudy Morning

Overcast with some fog and drizzle - brightened by friends

Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries--stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded forever.- ~Herman Melville~

Our day began with fog wending its way through the woods then the sun came out and gilded the yellow leaves of the oaks and beech filling the darkness with golden light. As the sun rose higher into the skies the clouds drifted away and soon autumn seemed more like summer as humidity and temperature began to climb. The weather reporters say that our temperature is twenty degrees higher than normal for this time of year.

Bees are gathering their last harvests of pollen from the flowers. The occasional butterfly is still seen on the late blooms of the herbs or cone flowers. Spring chicks have become full grown turkeys and fill the clearing with their calls.

Soaking up late autumn sunshine
reveling in crisp air
crimson, persimmon and yellow leaves
the enchantment of
sunlit woods

A small sound
draws my attention to
a blue clematis blossom
swaying in the breeze

As I watch
the bell like flower
bumps and seems ready
to jump from the vine

Wings buzzing
a bee backs slowly
out of the bell of the flower
golden pollen filling
sacks on his legs.

Autumn Visitor

October

A new month

beginning with a rainbow promise

seems like an invitation to begin again

When gentians roll their fingers tight

To save them for the morning,

And chestnuts fall from satin burrs

Without a sound of warning;
When on the ground red apples lie

In piles like jewels shining,

And redder still on old stone walls

Are leaves of woodbine twining;
When all the lovely wayside things

Their white-winged seeds are sowing,

And in the fields still green and fair,

Late aftermaths are growing;
When springs run low, and on the brooks,

In idle golden freighting,

Bright leaves sink noiseless in the hush

Of woods, for winter waiting;
When comrades seek sweet country haunts,

By twos and twos together,

And count like misers, hour by hour,

October's bright blue weather.

- Helen Hunt Jackson, October's Bright Blue Weather