Pity Not

As beautiful as I found the falling leaves,
I grieved a bit about those that drop in the dark,
Where no one watches their gentle tumble,
Perhaps a bit like trees that fall in the forest
With no one to hear. Do they make a sound?
And then I remembered this creative answer to my concern.

“There was a young man who said "God
Must find it exceedingly odd
To think that the tree
Should continue to be
When there's no one about in the quad."

Reply:
"Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd;
I am always about in the quad.
And that's why the tree
Will continue to be
Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God.”

Release

Three times in ten minutes
Did a gust drop hundreds of leaves.
What mechanism makes each leaf
Drop in the minute it does,
Neither two minutes before,
Nor two minutes later?

In any case: this performance
Plays all month.

Fall

I watched the leaves waft down
In the wind’s ballet.

Grieving

One son cried today,
Reluctant to explain.
In the end, he was sad,
For he didn’t know how
To deal with a brother’s
Disobedience.

Yes, my son, this is hard.
Others make bad choices,
You will see all your life.

Correct them privately.
If no change, then find another,
Probably parents in this case.
And all of it do in love.

Blooming

In general, I realize that children learn things at their own pace,
That if I had two sons reading readily at four and five,
It is okay if two more still struggle at seven and nine.

A bell curve has outliers, but they, too, are a part of the curve.

So I noticed with thanksgiving this week
That Abraham, from one day to the next,
Went from reading sequels to Nate the Great
To reading almost 200 pages in Smile,
A graphic novel about a middle schooler and her traumatic teeth.
“My brothers kept urging me to keep reading, so I did!”

And, perhaps buoyed by this success,
He started to write a fable, illustrated, yes, but predominately words,
Not pictures.

And Joe, whom I have worked with daily for a year and more,
Who still forgets more than half the letter sounds,
Got a short movie yesterday that sings, for each sound,
“The B says /b/,” starting with A and going all through.
He spent the evening singing these sounds under his breath,
Writing them and erasing them on his created whiteboard.
An aural learner, perhaps, who needed less visuals and more sound.

And so we learn together.

The Wind

When I returned to my hollow,
I remembered that, last time, I sought to sit
High on the slope, but felt called,
Inexplicably, to the floor.
From that vantage point, I saw the leaves
Falling so beautifully as to blind me.

I had forgotten this small prompting,
And record it now to say
Obedience is important,
Even in the little things,
For my own good.

Autumn Praise

Angels in the earth are shouting choruses of autumn praise.
Gold upon the trees is shaking, leaves in their translucent way;
Kingly garment, radiant blue, spread across the cloudless sky;
Dancing breeze to stir the treetops, swaying branches lifted high.

The sun, a strongman in his glory, brave upon the midday stage.
Silver diamonds on the water, tossed on joyful skipping waves.
Children running on the hilltops, in the rolling golden grass
Is this all just earnest payment of a great inheritance?

Now, while we have breath within us, let us offer thankful praise.
We’ve been rescued by the Shepherd, from the dark and stormy day.
We’ve seen winter, our souls frozen, through the nights of numbing cold.
Jesus gives to earthly paupers from the warmth of heaven’s gold.

Oh my soul, a taste of heaven, signals coming glory bright.
See him clothed in brilliant robes, the Lamb of God in perfect light.

Written by a friend, a decade and more,
This has been my October praise song,
From the yellow aspens in Colorado
To the long, vibrant orange fall in Virginia.

This year, the praise extended to the rocky coast of
Portland, Maine, where I stood overlooking
The diamonds on the waters of the ocean,
The colors of the trees around the bay.

In the clear blue skies and beautiful sunlight of the afternoon,
My niece ran down the grassy hilltop behind me,
And, later, many children rolled down a grassy slope with glee.
We offered thankful praise.