<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div dir="auto" style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class="">Autumnal</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: 14px;" class=""><i class="">after a line from William Stafford</i></span></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">When the leaves are about to yellow and fall</div><div class="">ask me then how I tried to hold on to what was green,</div><div class="">how I thought perhaps I was different,</div><div class="">how everything I thought I knew about gold</div><div class="">turned brittle and brown. Ask me what it was like</div><div class="">to fall then. Sometimes the world’s workings feel transparent</div><div class="">and we know ourselves as the world. Sometimes</div><div class="">the only words that can find our lips are thank you,</div><div class="">though the gifts look nothing like anything</div><div class="">we ever thought we wanted. Sometimes, gratitude</div><div class="">arrives in us, not because we are willing,</div><div class="">but because it insists on itself, like a weed,</div><div class="">like a wind, like change.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer</div></div></body></html>