Sunday, October 12, 2008

Sunday Morning Gospel Hour


Jeannie Kendall ~ The Old Rugged Cross

~~~**~~~**~~~


Burning Leaves

There's orange and gold and scarlet on the fields
Beside the somber black of earth new-plowed;
A woman burning red and yellow
leaves
The pale blue spiral twisting to a cloud.

One afternoon like this we walked alone
Through orchards and beneath a bent old oak,
The spice of ripened apples mingling with
The faint and stirring pungency of smoke.

No need of words to mar that perfect hour
Which hangs star-bright against the midnight blue
Of other days. A whole eternity
Is etched in poignant silences anew.

These many years! Again the flowing flame
Of scarlet oak. Again the autumn sheaves.
Love, laughter, pain and parting, life and death
Are blended in the smell of burning leaves.

Zula Bennington Greene aka "Peggy of the Flint Hills"
October 17, 1942

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