Fall                                                                 Harvest Moon

The Vikings looked good today; good, not great, but hey that’s a hell of lot better than last year.

The look and feel of mid-November outside.  The Norwegian maple across the tree has dropped its skirt, flared down around its ankles and now stands almost naked to the elements.  Trees undress before the coldest weather.  The opposite tact taken by Minnesota humans.

James Whitcomb Riley

Our woods take up the west horizon so we don’t see the sunset, but when I walked down to the mailbox this afternoon, there, across Round Lake, the late setting sun added its burnt orange to the maples and oaks.  Cirrus clouds gathered in waves sat watching it all, grey eminences, quiet and unmoving.

This time of year always pushes me back toward Indiana, a Hoosier boyhood.  In the post above this I’m including a poem Indiana’s Poet Laureate, James Whitcomb Riley.  My mother read him to me when I was a small boy and, in fact, he has some relationship to our family, thought just what it is I don’t recall.  I do know that my Uncle Riley and my cousin Richard’s son, Uncle Riley’s grandson, also bears the name.