Woodcliff Lake.

Woodcliff Lake

       Tenuous, the fog rises over the lake
   Showing the blue underneath in ragged streaks only.
   But in the distance a flowering of golds
   is coming into view and, round the corner, fires
   of oak leaves stir the limited horizon
   of our restricted lives.

       A sudden melancholy strikes you from nowhere
   as the paean of leaves majestically swells:
   is it your youth that's fleeing, winter approaching,
   or are you falling with the fall of nature,
   feeling your limbs go up in flames, your hair
   caught in this milky spray that drowns the heart?

       You're not the child from Grimm who forgot to shudder
   at the sight of death, but your ride today is a silent
   search for the face of someone who was your friend:
   you do not want the fall of leaves to grieve you.
   You are their gold and their red, as you were their green.
   So every journey contains the seed of its end.

       Let her be green, you Mover that I'm seeking,
   once more with a child's fresh vision.
   Let her be water, a prism stripped of colors,
   but with the idea of iris in it.
   And with these yellows anchored in her like suns
   of ripened poise, may her

       ride every morning be a salutation to winter.
   Gaze at a tree reduced to a geometry of lines,
   a blade of grass made into a blade of steel,
   an acorn resting under feet of snow
   but growing into a thing of utmost beauty.
   The yearning is the essence, not the Spring.