Autumn

I miss Michigan so much in the fall. So I am posting one of my favorite poems in memory of Michigan's beautiful fall trees!

Autumn

Autumn in felted slipper shuffles on,

Muted yet fiery, --Autumn's character.

Brown as a monk yet flaring as a whore,

And in the distance blue as Raphael's robe

Tender around the Virgin.

Blue the smoke

Drifting across brown woods; but in the garden

Maples are garish, and surprising leaves

Make sudden fires with sudden crests of flame

Where the sun hits them; in the deep-cut leaf

Of peony, like a medieval axe

Of rusty iron; fervour of azalea

Whose dying days repeat her June of flower;

In Sargent's cherry, upright as a torch

Till ravelled sideways by the wind to stream

Disorderly, and strew the mint of sparks

In coins of pointed metal, cooling down;

And that true child of Fall, whose morbid fruit

Ripens, with walnuts, only in November,

The Medlar lying brown across the thatch;

Rough elbows of rough branches, russet fruit

So blet it's worth no more than sleepy pear,

But in its motley pink and yellow leaf

A harlequin that some may overlook

Nor ever think to break and set within

A vase of bronze against a wall of oak,

With Red-hot Poker, Autumn's final torch.

Vita Sackville-West, 1892-1962