Woody’s award-winning novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and orderable at all bookshops.
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From Woody’s column archives, early January of 2021…
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The other day, shortly before autumn turned the page to winter in Northern California, I caught my 2-year-old granddaughter Maya standing on the couch. Naturally, I joined her – not standing on the cushions, for I was wearing shoes, but kneeling and facing backwards so as to look out the front picture window with her.
Maya likes to stand there, in stocking feet, watching for people to come home; watching for the mail carrier and delivery drivers; watching for the garbage truck. Watching, watching, watching the world parade by.
I highly recommend it. You should try it sometime for the little girl is onto something. Her big window surpasses a jumbo flat-screen TV, which she is not allowed to watch. Wise parents she has.
So there my dear Magnificent Maya and I were, standing and kneeling side by side and watching together when the most magical thing happened – it started to snow. The snowflakes were larger than Maya’s small hand spread wide, almost the size of a slice of bread, and they were golden and red and orange and 50 more hues of honey and flame and sunset. It was a blizzard painted by Monet.
I grew up in the Midwest with autumns of a brilliance we do not enjoy in Southern California, and I have seen the “Fall Colors” on the East Coast, but never before had I witnessed a tree shed its leaves as quickly as a person shrugging off a winter coat.
One instant the majestic maple across the street was chock-full, the next moment it was naked as a jaybird sans even a jay perched on a bare limb. I exaggerate only barely, for it was like watching a time-lapse video. In a span of five minutes, 50 percent of the leaves fell without pause. Five minutes more and 90 percent of the foliage covered the ground.
A strong gusty wind was not even the cause. The full assemblage of leaves had been rustling softly on the branches like wind chimes in a gentle breeze when, all of the sudden, the chief leaf apparently shouted “It’s time!” and they all began letting go.
It was a bit like watching a fireworks finale and Maya and I rightly exhaled a few “ooohs” and ahhhs.” A passerby looking in the window would have surely seen bookend mouths agape with our eyes opened even wider in wonder.
If a tree can be compared to a poem, this lovely one was poetry in motion. And yet the poem that came to my mind was not Joyce Kilmer’s renowned “Trees” that famously begins: “I think that I shall never see / A poem lovely as a tree.”
Instead, I smiled remembering “Fantastic Fall” written in pencil, in neat printing, by Maya’s mommy when she was in fourth grade. It won the youth division of the Ventura Poetry Festival in 1998, still hangs in my writing study, and reads:
Fall is a great season, here is my reason:
The leaves on trees turn golden brown,
Then the leaves fall DOWN, Down, down…
You rake them into a giant hump,
Next comes the good part – jump, Jump, JUMP!
Leaves sail through the crisp autumn air,
And fall down, Down, DOWN everywhere!
As the leaves piled up, Up, UP, I dearly wanted to grab Maya’s small hand, and grab a rake, and gather a giant hump for her to jump, Jump, JUMP! into. Alas, we were already 10 magical minutes late for her dinner.
Come next Fantastic Fall, I think we will let the food grow cold, Cold, COLD!
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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn
Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.
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Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn.