Poetry Sunday: The Beautiful Changes

Autumn has arrived and, if we just peek over our windowsill, we can see October coming up our driveways. It is a time of change - changes in Nature and changes in ourselves as we enter this more contemplative season.

Richard Wilbur's poem addresses the beautiful changes that take place in autumn as the forest and the meadow are touched back to wonder. If we look hard, maybe we can see the changes in ourselves as well. 

The Beautiful Changes

by Richard Wilbur


One wading a Fall meadow finds on all sides
The Queen Anne's Lace lying like lilies
On water; it glides
So from the walker, it turns
Dry grass to a lake, as the slightest shade of you
Valleys my mind in fabulous blue Lucernes.

The beautiful changes as a forest is changed
By a chameleon's tuning his skin to it:
As a mantis, arranged
On a green leaf, grows
Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves
Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows.

Your hands hold roses always in a way that says
They are not only yours; the beautiful changes
In such kind ways,
Wishing ever to sunder
Things and things' selves for a second finding, to lose
For a moment all that it touches back to wonder.

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