November 20: Fog

It was a foggy morning, as forecast. (I don't know why, but I am more surprised that we can predict fog than that we can predict tornado weather—maybe because I understand less about the conditions that create fog specifically.) Early in the morning, I drove over to the city park that hosts Saturday recycling drop-off, and it was pretty quiet. Flocks of blackbirds were browsing in the picnic ground nearby.



I like fog. It makes everything feel soft and private.

Without blue sky and sun and shadow to distract, I noticed the difference in the two sweet gum trees near my balcony. I know Sweet gums go through about four colors as they turn in the fall, but it was interesting to see that the tree closer to my balcony, viewed as a whole, looks all red, while the other one looks very much yellow. If someone couldn't see the shapes and details that mark them as sweet gums, they might think they were different types of trees.

November 21: Worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie

Spring and Fall: To a Young Child
~ Gerard Manley Hopkins

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?






Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?






Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.





Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:






It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.




I memorized this poem in college, back when I thought I "knew why." These days, I think I was still a child then. But no matter. Incidentally, Natalie Merchant recently published a lovely setting of this poem.