The October Wood

Yesterday our world was trapped deep
within a dark aquarium. Today the vast sky
crowning our landscape is streaked and mottled
with a peculiar melange of white puffery and
darkly streaked shutters, with a nimbus of
light beyond, where pale blue entices a
hesitant sun yet to make a full appearance.

Every living thing appears as though
released from an apprehensive state of
transition. Suddenly, it is October, with
geese crowding the sky, hummingbirds long
departed and robins preparing for their journey.
In the woods, wind and rain have propelled
leaves and needles into a richly glowing
carpet upon the pathways below.

The ravine's waterways, muddy with
detritus, run dark and determined in their
passage toward a swollen Ottawa River.
Twirling and swirling, gurgling with swamp gas,
the water eddies and carries along fallen
twigs and clay scooped by its ferocious
storm-driven force from uneven banks.

The hawthornes and the ashes are suddenly
winter-ready, their bare, dark limbs stretched
to the sky. Pine needles spread their orange
excess everywhere, a lovely decorative touch,
emphasizing the scarlet glory of the staghorn
sumacs. Bright yellow foliage of the birch canopy
and the copper of beeches; glorious reds of the
maples flaming alongside the steady, dark-green
of spruce and fir present a symphony of autumn.

Frantically consumed small furred creatures
forage, racing from oaks to hemlocks, pines to
spruce, and the many cache-places where, in this
urban forest, peanuts are left daily for their
delectation as a homage to nature and her
creatures, affording us endless light-hearted
and comic scenarios as nature grooms us all
toward yet another inexorable deep freeze.