Autumn Trail

I want to tell you what hills are like in October
when colors gush down mountainsides
and little streams are freighted with a caravan of leaves,
I want to tell you how they blush and turn in fiery shame


and joy,

how their love burns with flames consuming and terrible
until we wake one morning and woods are like a smoldering

plain --

a glowing caldron full of jewelled fire;
the emerald earth a dragon's eye
the poplars drenched with yellow light
and dogwoods blazing bloody red.
Travelling southward earth changes from gray rock to green velvet.

Margaret Walker
Excerpt from October Journey

(Pictures taken on the Sudden Tract Trail south of Cambridge ON)