one maple leaf

 the hidden within comes out

one sugar leaf maple leaf pulls my eye to it,

it's as big as a small face,

golden-yellow against smooth grey bark,

it is living a wonderful metaphor

for how one might be in the last days of life,

when no longer producing with one's life,

as the working self drops away,

now can be the time for the hidden to manifest,

the underlying basics to be revealed,

for the leaf a glory within now visible for its last hours,

I want to be like a sugar maple leaf

as winter messages the loss coming,

a last flare before the light dies,

two hours later I return to where I celebrated the leaf,

and it is gone, to the ground,

another lesson to savor while one can.

I found a replacement leaf to call up the memory.

by Henry H. Walker

October 1, ‘26

blaze against the dying of the light!

 

A Leaf Samhein

the North American continent reaches boldly toward the Arctic,

we travel to the north, close to the latitude of Canada,

where deciduous trees assertively reach skyward

as if in defiance of winter's coming 

when they must sleep a third of the year,

in no part of our country 

do the woods celebrate the passing year

as fully, and as well, as the celebratory colors

tree after tree shouts at the heavens here in the Northeast,

earlier peoples a month from now in the islands off Europe,

lit great fires in celebration? in defiance?

as the dark increasingly impinged on the day,

the Celts called it Samhein (SOW-een),

it feels to me that the trees here in Maine

light the bonfires of their inner selves

and declare which side they're on,

the Dark will come

but the Light inside endures.

by Henry H. Walker

October 1, ‘26