An October Woods Walk Poem by Bill Galvin

On the morning of the day
That the remnants of Hurricane Patricia will
Bluster and blow their way through New England
And darken the late October skies,
She casts before her arrival some brisk breezes
That loosen leaves from their already tenuous grasp;
And they drop to the ground, assuredly,
Taking away summer memories fair and warm.

With a smattering of red amongst the yellow-gold,
A leafy symphony begins with a short melody,
As single leaves drop in space as prelude;
In downwind flight, dozens more add to the composition;
A flourishing orchestral gust follows a pregnant calm,
Then the leaves fall in furious flurries,
Cleaning some trees almost clean,
Until the next chilled months are thawed
By the return of the sun.

Bulbous clouds merge to form one cement-gray sky,
And the pending storm presents its first raindrops.
The night brings winds up to fifty miles an hour,
Making heavy, rainy sweeps through the treetops;
Making sounds only Mother Nature can make;
Sometimes alarming, sometimes calming.

By noon, the storm is suddenly gone,
And all the earth revels in a bright blue day,
As the last of the gray clouds
Finish scudding away across the clearing sky;
Much like the inattentive wild turkey,
Which just notices that the flock has moved on,
And it hastens in quickstep, wings flapping, to catch up.

Warm southerlies are soothing to the short-sleeved,
As they move about town, uplifted, in the ionized air.

This forest trail I’m on is now a carpet,
Of yellow birch and beech and brown pine needles;
There are branches broken by last night’s winds,
That made each tree sway to its own forest rhythm,
And bump into one another on the airy dance floor.

All about, in the deep dampness, is a natural infusion;
It’s the sweet smell of leafy decay and decomposition;
A lingering aromatic finale to this…
Another ephemeral masterpiece of Nature.

10-31-2015