Autumn in (upstate) New York

A misty morning drive to Bovina for an egg sandwich takes me through this gentle upstate landscape. Rolling hills dotted with farmhouses, barns and the occasional Airstream, milk truck rolling down a country road…My crush on pink peonies and orange roses has given way to a deep love of russet, apple, pumpkin, the smell of woodsmoke, the sound of acorns dropping.

It's becoming an annual ritual for me to post this poem by Rilke. (2013, 2012)
The poem that gave me orchards in space.

                             Autumn

     The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,

     as if orchards were dying high in space.

     Each leaf falls as if it were motioning "no".

     And tonight the heavy earth is falling,

     away from all the other stars in the loneliness.

     We're all falling. This hand here is falling.

     And look at the other one ... It's in them all.

     And yet there is Someone, whose hands

     infinitely calm, hold up all this falling.

                               -Rainier Marie Rilke (translated by Robert Bly)

The best thing about blogging is the friends I've made, and I'm not going to call you virtual friends either. I love that New Zealand Amanda's posts about spring coincide with mine about fall, and that when I am shoveling snow she will be sharing her peonies. It truly is a world wide web, both infinitely large and comfortably small.

xo, Jen