The Garden of the Seasons: Dispatches From Octoberland

Leaves pile up around the chairs on the veranda, like rain filling a ship, a vessel. Our lives are a vessel filling up with leaves, and light, and shadow. In the distance is noise, and mountains, the crows call in, with a regularity of their own choosing. October in the happy land of small mountains, domesticated to appearances, reachable by amateurs. And, for a while each day, the sun shines like a revelation What have done to deserve this? The lady gardener wears a wide Asian farmer's hat. Even though at home I putter in similar fashion, here the earth entire is a garden as if earth were continually at play. The hills bloom yellowing configurations. Leaves spotted brown from the endless rain, water stained,
as if mapping the spread of some looming disaster, look rusty up close. But no one is unhappy here.  It’s simply not allowed. And nobody would notice if you were.


The silence of the golden world fills with distant geese, Internal prompts of the changes, last turns of the wheel That eventually point to the west The evening land, in which We find, as always, Green mountains, golden sands

2. Hermit on the Pond I can't think who else would live here. Yet I am envious.The stylish pointy roof like a chimney cap, ora man hoeing in a field. Instead of a lawn, a world of reflections on which float fragments of your neighbors.When they prepare for the coldby turning colors(for your delight) and then, the philosophic gesture, shedding their extremities, what will you shed when those trees give up color and withdraw into themselves waiting for a propitious moment to do it all again?Will you wait as well? How unnecessary that the owner's sign says, "Danger.""Do Not Enter Herein."
 3.Orange Spot
If this place has a name, and most of them do, I do not recall it. The ground goes up and down.The stones shiny in the final daylight hourand the leaves fall on the trail like the colored currency of a more festively imaginative realm.We turn back before darkness turns the trail into more earth, more stones, more solemn stillness,ancient echoes of a world before us. Only the sudden amber light finds its way,a silence-seeking searchlight.  through this paradise of silenceand three pairs of scurrying feet.


4. Aspinwall Hotel Only the portrait remains of the grand hotel situated up high on a once-cleared site in a once-desired location for those leaving urban addresses   for fresh air, rural outlooks, idle days. People change, extending their sense of place with the help of distance-conquering machines. The trees vote for change as well and summon their ally, fire, to clear the ground once more for a new way of life.