REMEMBERING EASTERN AUTUMN

     Leaves... I feel them dying in the air
     -- in the city, I cannot see them.
     Not here, in the plain California sun.

     My whole being laments to risk their touch
     ... stretch wide my hands to the sky,
     breathe richly of the appled air. 

             (It would seem I should not be here)
             ... thinking back into Pennsylvania:
     the Halloween season, the smoky shadows
     of orange hills turning pale...
     brisk as the dry, yellowed corn
     fields... the stalks still standing

             (tired soldiers in their golden tatters)
             proud and tall by day -- by night to whisper
      ghostly, with memory and the last of the green...
      beneath the high, dark low of the clouds
      ... the rustle of a cold, silver moon.