I’m intentionally writing this missive on election day before any of the results have come in but I am aware that when you read them our country will be in a very different place, one way or the other, than we are as I write these words.

Here are two poems that marry autumn weather with the aging process.  The first, is likely more applicable to many of us, weathering the storms of this season – though this year we’ve had so few of them!  The second makes me think of my visits with my 97-year-old mother who lives in a nursing home and still has quite a sweet tooth!  Chocolate macaroons from a local bakery here in Cape Porpoise are her current favorite.

The first poem is by Marge Piercy.

    October nor’easter

Leaves rip from the trees
still green as rain scuds
off the ocean in broad grey
scimitars of water hard
as granite pebbles flung
in my face.

Sometimes my days are torn
from the calendar,
hardly touched and gone,
like leaves too fresh
still to fall littering
sodden on the bricks.

But I have had them—
torrents of days. Who
am I to complain they
shorten? I used them
hard, wore them out
and down, grabbed

at what chance offered.
If I stand stripped
and bare, my bones
still shine like opals
where love rubbed sweetly,
hard, against them.

And this poem is by Barbara Crooker.

                   All Saints

It’s one day past the Day of the Dead, and this has been
a bad year, six funerals already and not done yet.
But on this blue day of perfect weather, I can’t muster
sadness, for the trees are radiant, the air thick as Karo
warmed in a pan. I have my friend’s last book spread
on the table and a cup of coffee in a white china mug.
All the leaves are ringing, like the tiny bells of God.
My mother, too, is ready to leave. All she wants now
is sugar: penuche fudge, tapioca pudding, pumpkin roll.
She wants to sit in the sun, pull it around her shoulders
like an Orlon sweater, and listen to the birds
in the far-off trees. I want this sweetness to linger
on her tongue, because the days are growing shorter
now, and night comes on, so quickly.

I hope each of you have been able to enjoy this glorious weather and the radiant trees with leaves ringing like tiny bells.  And that as they fall, you, too, are left with bones shining like opals where love has rubbed them sweetly, so sweetly.