After the holiday . . .

After everyone is back at work and the leftovers are gone . .

You try to be grateful for just the sun on your shoulders and  try to remember spring.

                                                                         

                                     And hope that everyone you love - knows it . . . .
                                       November makes it all seem more important.

      November

Leave us something of yourself,

sweet trees, indifferent bees,

spiders wrapping up a summer’s job,

now listless in the chilly breeze.

Leave us something of yourself.

Do not forget these eyes that traced

your dewy webs and pollened toes

and watched you love the sky’s bright face

with fingertips that airily rose

to brush the clouds with leafy lace.

Leave us here believing

in the hills aglow, again,

and in a churning freshet searching

for what it cannot know,

but then, again,

knows.

It is this season’s yearnings

that foretell Spring’s bright returnings.

Catherine Wilson

November Light

Sunrise as we never see it before leaf fall.

Fairy lights . . 

Truly magic.

Later in the day over the same field - a new light.

The wind picked up and things seemed to get away . .

It got scary.  I wanted to call the Fire Department.

The neighbors  finally got it under control.

Still later in the day, a fainter glow . . .

Brother Bob's and Sis-in-law Robin's home.

He built the gazebo . . just painted and installed the upper lights.

                                                     
                              From our house . . their light is our night light.
                            Their family creates the glow that brought us to this hill                        
                                          overlooking Loudonville, Ohio



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Ghosts!

Interesting thing this cusp between October and November.  Some cautioning inward-turning awareness . . . of the shorter days . . . the wind scrapping branches against the siding . .  . and the sense that your yard birds are in on it.   Yeah.  The little goofs.  Poking around the jack o' lanterns and flitting away leaving only ghost images on your lens.   

You could tell by the looks on those faces that something was afeather . .  uh that is 'afoot'.
A closer look . . .   Yep!

                                                                             
                                                                                   Nuthatch Gremlin

                                                                                 Chickadee sprite

Nuthatch Banshee

                                                                   Titmouse Terror

After the morning feeding frenzy .  . things started to come into focus.

Not so scary after all . . . 

Little Mr. Intention

Little Mr. Intention

How could the little titmouse know,

holding seeds between his toes,

that further out along the limb,

he makes the leaves twitch on their stems?

His tufted head pounds up and down;

the careful listener hears the sound,

of sunflower seed yielding up its heart

to a pecking, determined dart.

The poplar leaves, out at the tip,

tremble gold beneath each dip

of beady eyes and feathered crest,

before they drift to autumn's rest.

Catherine Wilson



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Carmen Ohio - Song of Ohio

Central Ohio in the fall.

Proud to be an American.

Proud to own an American Jeep.

Wind-deposited whimsy.

Feathered Whimsy.

Follow me.

                                                                             
                                                   America.  Exceptional.
                       The people and the land they've made free and prosperous.

Washing Windows in Autumn

Washing Windows in Autumn

You know the job.

Balancing on a ladder,

trying not to notice

that the world's a wobblier place

than it was a decade ago.

Autumn’s light is steeper.
It reveals more than naked trees through the glass,

and tilts you into ritual cleansings:
the annual battle with detritus.

Face to face with it, the year returns.

While you drifted through the weeks,

the pines threw pollen, the spiders spun,

the neighbor’s garden sifted over.

And, despite your efforts, at least two birds 
thought the panes were air.

And now you've got to clear that moment away.

The worst:  the time when the phoebe

dove for the butterfly decal.
Bloody hell.

And then there are all the parent spiders

you try to gently brush toward the ground,

and doing so, watch the pepper clouds of babies

scrambling for their lives

as you hear yourself apologize.

When your shoulders start to ache,

and the ladder starts to shake,

a leisurely pace can't be maintained.

So, you focus on sparing that one spider

you've watched from inside the house

as she raised her tiny brood on the outside.

And finally, you wonder if God struggles as you do,

when you're deciding whom to save,

while merely trying to improve the view.

Cathy Wilson