two down, and bright maples

 The maple I see out* the kitchen window I just cleaned glows yellow in the light of evening. 

Yes, at this late date I have started to wash the windows. I just couldn't make myself do it. Today, I had a headache, which wasn't bad, but I didn't like it. It's going to go below freezing overnight, so I went outside to cut some chives. The fresh air was so bracing, I came in the house and decided to wash a window, and then another. Just like that I did two, when before I was making such a production out of it in my mind. What is it about the spur of the moment? But you can't always operate like that, on a sudden impulse. Life is interesting. 

Anyway, the headache is gone.

"The air is as cool as an old coin teaspoon, and a faint tang of blue woodsmoke spices the wind. The color of the great sugar maples is so dazzling, it seems I must have dreamed it. The maples give forth light, like closer suns. The oaks glow with a garnet fire, and all the thickets blaze with scarlets and pale gold and cinnamon. It is like the music of a trumpet."

                                                 -   Gladys Taber

*after I typed up to this point, I realized the October poem was playing on the kitchen radio, and I went out there in time to hear him say

Now is the glory of the universe manifest. And in the mighty pageant of the hills, each patch of woods elects its own tree beauty queen. You like the dogwood? We don't quarrel. I'll take the maple, that yellow torch.