FIRST WEEK OF NOVEMBER the sky crowded with gray each day at waking covers the earth with a dim shine moist and warm the air feels like spring leaves down bark wet trees look like a somber audience here to witness in their dark suits what is done by the sweep of cold air which overnight drives the clouds away to the same nowhere they came from the sun's brilliance piercing everywhere next day tender plants wilting when the light strikes their gone season come now and where in all this do I find an emblem of myself or my fate? clouds appearing and vanishing the witness of trees the summer things whose final blow comes from the sun they lived for or that very sun most brilliant when its existence is naked or the sky itself full then empty empty then full its state always changing?