Blue Mountain Arts Poetry Contest

October Woods
by Shelagh Cosgrove

Fifth Contest
third Place

I think how the woods are still 
there — an expansive floor of pine-needles 
still celebrating here and there in yellow mushrooms 
or white phlox the transforming light. 
How the trail must be going up that same slope 
all covered with maple, oak and beech leaves 
in a riot of pinks, purples, reds. 
I see even now, how that ceiling of greener leaves, 
caught suddenly in the October breeze, 
sends shivers through the hills — air and foliage 
a great glittering dance of 
change. 

I hear our talk and laughter still 
going up the hill, and something silent 
beneath, like tendrils of vines, 
connects our limbs, 
moving as we have been for a long time 
through patches of light and shadow. 

My sons, 
we are back in our separate worlds, 
a grown-up world of effort and pace, 
yet I feel sure, in the silent interstices 
between its rush and blur, 
something lovely and green comes in 
like prayer, 
latching its tendrils to the roughest places, 
healing and binding us just enough 
to get us to the topmost ridge 
where sky and water 
mirror 
the light we take with us 
in all our faces.