Nature's Gold

Walking the dog, the air cool, the sunlight streaming, I come to a SCREECHING halt. Eeerrrt!

“Look!” I point to the sapling in front of our townhouse. It’s broken. It’s sick. Oh, no – it’s dying of some sort of foliage disease. The dog sniffs a sticky, brown spot on the sidewalk, but I can’t take my eyes off the tree. Most of the tree is a shiny healthy green, but one entire branch is full of leaves that are a funky, spotted color.

I step closer and lift to my tip-toes. The leaves burn fiery orange.

The sapling isn’t poisoned with a fungus, it’s beautiful.

Ten years since I’ve seen autumn.
Ten years.
Living in California all that time, I thought I remembered September.

* * *

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower,
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn turns into day.
Nothing gold can stay.
--Robert Frost

On a completely unrelated topic -- check out my first Ask a Blogger column here: MaHC.