Dead leaves, and the nourishment they store, remind us that there’s beauty and life to be found in disorder and decay.
• Laura Poppick, What Happens to All the Dead Leaves
a friend from my past who i saw at a reunion
someone i used to laugh and play sports with
grimaced when i told him what i do
a chaplain in hospice, i said, when he asked me
and immediately he had no words
just this look of distaste so striking
as though i were some unclean israelite
who had brought death’s stench
into the holy place
i wish i’d had the imagination to tell him
that what i do is walk among the autumn trees
i stop, examine each luminescent leaf
and try to capture its essence
before its inevitable letting go
falling to the earth
feeding the ecosystem
bringing life to us all
The Internet Monk Archives 
Can you find a new hobby?
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I live nowhere
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They bloom for me this week in Australia
Come down to Kuey in lilac time
It isn’t far from London
For me Spring is so sad
I feel so alone
My life revolves and comes back to the blank starting place
Endless circles going nowhere
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My favorite fragrance is of the lilac bushes outside the bedroom windows in the springtime.
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Oh, man… so much THIS! Good comment, thatotherhean.
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Too bad it wasn’t “They’re lucky to have you.”
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Mary Oliver! Nice one also!
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That’s both odd and fascinating!
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+1
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Not at all. Distaste is quite common. Part and parcel of a death-denying culture.
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Or it could be, Mike, that he winced while thinking, “Better you than me, brother.”
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I’ve been like that for too many springs, too busy to notice the lilacs, and they only blossom for a few weeks.
For the past couple of years I’ve rebelled against myself and now I try very hard not to walk past a lilac without stopping to smell it. Nobody should be too busy for that.
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Sorry you had that experience with an old friend and sorry he lacked curiosity and imagination to see what joy your work can bring to you and families you work with.
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Nice poem. Is it possible you misread his expression? Distaste seems an odd way to respond.
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Beautifully put.
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Wow, Mike. Nice poetry. Thanks
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I Sit Beside the Fire and Think
I sit beside the fire and think
of all that I have seen
of meadow-flowers and butterflies
in summers that have been;
Of yellow leaves and gossamer
in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun
and wind upon my hair.
I sit beside the fire and think
of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring
that I shall ever see.
For still there are so many things
that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring
there is a different green.
I sit beside the fire and think
of people long ago
and people who will see a world
that I shall never know.
But all the while I sit and think
of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet
and voices at the door.
– J. R. R. Tolkien
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So often when fall comes I’m so busy with other things that I miss the changing of the leaves – I don’t really notice it until one day I look up and discover that nearly all the leaves have fallen and all the color is gone already. This year my intention is to go outside every day if I can, and mark every last little change of the season, storing up all that beauty against what’s promising to be a very long and dark winter for all of us.
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You did. This poem is your telling. One day, when he is in the right place at the right time, he’ll be able to hear it.
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autumn breeze
turns my head
with the leaves
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WHEN I AM AMONG THE TREES
When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”
(Mary Oliver)
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Spring and Fall: To a Young Child
Márgarét, are you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves, líke the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
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Beautiful !
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