I watched The Poconos wake up this morning.
Out the door at five-thirty,
and across the Gap by six,
I was there when they started their day.
Behind the wheel,
racing the setting moon to the western horizon,
I watched dark turn to dim
and dim give way to dawn
with a serendipitous series of wonders.
In the increasing incandescence of early dawn,
I drove through a cacophony of color
cascading down a thousand hills.
Maples, poplars, and hickories,
birches and beeches,
sumacs and shrubs
in surprising synchrony.
Trees of every tribe, language,
lobe count, and tongue
aflame with autumn’s blaze.
Penn’s peaks proclaiming
their general revelation.
A deciduous doxology.
October 12, 2022
Flagstones 