Last week I drove across the county to a memorial service for a dear friend. This was in the valley where our growing family lived for about seventeen years, and where my late husband worked for most of his career. The journey was through hills and valleys, vineyards and oak forests, where the early rains have brought out the most gorgeous colors of the season. In my town the Chinese Pistache trees are making the biggest splashes right now, but over there a wide assortment of sizes and shapes of venerable trees, and sloped vineyards of several wine grape varietals, brightened the landscape with a rich palette. So many beautiful sights nourished my heart! But in the end, it was a remembrance from my own garden that seemed to best illustrate this poem.

NOVEMBER

It is an old drama
this disappearance of the leaves,
this seeming death

of the landscape.
In a later scene,
or earlier,
the trees like gnarled magicians
produce handkerchiefs
of leaves
out of empty branches.

And we watch.
We are like children
at this spectacle
of leaves,
as if one day we too
will open the wooden doors
of our coffins
and come out smiling
and bowing
all over again.

~ Linda Pastan, born 1932, American poet