Autumn and Melancholy

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.

-Robert Frost

Passing

The leaves are falling,

Beautiful, rich with age;

Heavy with memory and rain.

I walked under these leaves all summer

Drinking their green coolness,

While above me, they waved gentle hands

And caressed the sky.

Now they fall, curling toward me

And past, to settle in quilted layers

Of color and decay

On the changing ground.

I gather them up in handfuls

And smell the brittleness of age;

I fold them to my chest like

Family: old and passing.

Above me the trees remain,

Chastened and stripped, as if fasting.

And, holding the future in outstretched arms,

They dance in the darkening air.

-Robert Bode

CPW