Fadeout

The pleasures of plenty are easy to appreciate: the roast pork, the apple pie a-la-mode, the symphony blazing forte, the lambent flower beds of June, the autumn leaves at their peak. But now we are moving into the fadeout of the year. The trees have dropped their "Joseph's coat" to trample underfoot and now stand stark in early twilight.

To make it through the long lean times of the North Country unshattered, it is necessary to learn the pleasures of paucity. If not the symphony, the lone flute. If not the pie, the first sip of hot green tea. If not the moan, the sigh. The last leaf to fall is the most precious.

The slim beech lets go
every leaf but this one.
What gold is in it?