Leaf takings

I just came back from the New Hampshire Seacoast, and I can tell you that Amy is absolutely right:

The red leaves are scarlet, carmine, crimson, vermilion, rose, cherry, cardinal, maroon, magenta, lipstick, carnation, damask, madder... they are sanguine, fevered, inflamed, rubescent.

What I wrote in my journal last night, with more focus on the colors other than red: The trees look like stands of gigantic multi-colored celosia plumosa, the color of marigolds, pumpkins, butternut and acorn squash.

Speaking of pumpkins, Kathleen has added her photos from the Keene Pumpkin Festival I posted about a couple of days ago.

6:12:36 PM      trackback [] 

Lunacy under the Blood Moon

[Boston Globe staff photo by Stan Grossfeld, in St. Louis last night]

I'm back from New Hampshire and trying to catch up on things. Tonight promises to be a wild night, with the Red Sox trying to win the World Series under a lunar eclipse in the night sky above. Does this mean our shaggy heros will start howling at the moon? Will the mild-mannered St. Louis crowd join in? We'll have to wait and see.

Meanwhile, check out the NASA site on tonight's total lunar eclipse for more information and the schedule in your area.

For now, I leave you with a poem that appeared in The New Yorker in December 2002:

ANCIENT STORY

 

        At midnight I went outside to look at the

full moon. Bats were feasting on mosquitoes.

Out in the field a coyote was howling. The field

was bathed in a soft yellow light, and I could

see him, his head thrown back, like a passionate

tenor in an eerie opera. I wanted to join him, but

my howling was rusty. I walked slowly and quietly

in his direction.  Several times bats swooped within

an inch of my face. My blood was rushing. The coyote

saw me and went right on singing. I froze in my

tracks. It was beautiful. His song told some

ancient tale of grief and sorrow. I started to

whimper. And that turned into squealing. Then I

was bawling and weeping. Kind of blubbering, with

some yips and yelps thrown in. My head thrown back,

I began to wail. And I couldn’t stop wailing, it

felt so good. I had wakened the whole neighborhood,

and now they, too, were wailing.

 

-- James Tate

4:15:46 PM      trackback []