The Fall I. September New England comes to flower dying. Leaves like new-blown blossoms trail in fluttered rage from tainted trees. The year grows willful.
Stagnant ponds strain to clamber quarry walls.
Time slips indenture, backing age on fuddled age, confusing fall with summer snow with hawthorn flurries, apple flakes along black boughs. North of Boston, fire falls from tree to tree, and leaf by leaf perverse New England springs to bloom. The world is kindling for the Lord. I watched the woods of Concord catch, the flash of Canaan, Bethel, Keene, the raging hills of Holyoke. The forests of Vermont have gained for Boston not a single day and all the trees of Plymouth rise like smoke of children passed through fire for every falling leaf s a spit of flame that wants New England s death and every leaf s a burning tongue that cries for vengeance from our wrongs.