“The autumn shade is thin. Grey leaves lie faint
Where they will lie, and, where the thick green was,
Light stands up, like a presence, to the sky.
The trees seem merely shadows of its age.
 

 
 
“Nights grow colder. The Hunter and the Bear
Follow their tranquil course outside my window.
I feel the gentian waiting in the wood,
Blossoms waxy and blue, and blue-green stems
of the amaryllis waiting in the garden.
 
 
 
 
 
 
“I know, as though I waited what they wait,
The cold that fastens ice about the root,
A heavenly form, the same in all its changes,
Inimitable, terrible, and still,
And beautiful as frost.
 
 
 
 
 
“Fire warms my room.
Its light declares my books and pictures. Gently,
A dead soprano sings Mozart and Bach.
I drink bourbon, then go to bed, and sleep
In the Promethean heat of summer’s essence.”
excerpts from Autumn Shade, Edgar Bowers
 
 
 
 
 
“All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!”
excerpt from Winter Trees, William Carlos Williams
 
 
 
Photos by Sandra Peterson Ramirez