I had a nice visit with my sons today. Made me sad to leave. Haven't seen them enough since my foot surgery, but now we're back in action. We went to see Wallace and Grommet today. Funny movie! I recomend it.

Tonight we went to Josiah's pre-season basketball meeting. I can tell he's been running and training these last four weeks. "I've lost some of my belly," he told me. "I can tell," I said with a smile. Interestingly, he wanted his hair cut today in the same style as mine. Already, he's nearly an inch taller than I am (I know what you're thinking, Smokey; it's not a big accomplishment!)

The drive along route 80 was positively beautiful with the changing leaves here in mountains of Pennsylvania. Which brings me to this letter.

I believe I posted this on the old MSN version of GF three years ago. I have accidentally lost some of the archives over there, so I post it here for it's fall memory.

Dear Micah,

This weekend we were traveling in the car through the woods on route 192, going to meet your mother at the lake. Jo and Jon were in the back. You were up front with me and I pointed out the colors of the leaves (many branches down from a recent early snow storm), and mentioned how they would all fall soon, and the trees would be bare.
You said, “The leaves are notes.”
I didn’t think until later that you might have meant musical notes. I said, “Are there notes written on the leaves or are the leaves themselves actually notes.” I was thinking of the leaves of a notebook.
“The leaves themselves are notes, and they fall to the ground with a message.”
“The message is meant for the ground?”
“Yes.”
“What happens to the message?” I ask, fascinated once again by my six-year-old’s mind. “Is it for the grass?” (leaves of grass, I cannot keep Whitman at bay) “What are the trees telling the ground?”
You smile, “The ground doesn’t get the message. People come along and pick up the notes. They take them to school to hang on the wall.”
I am almost afraid, but am compelled to ask, “What do the notes say?”
Your smile is explosive, “ We WISH you a merry Christmas.” The feet were swinging, “We WISH you a merry Christmas. We WISH you a merry Christmas, and a happy New YEAR!”
Your smile was both brilliant and teasing. You took me to the edge of something, but adults are only allowed brief visit there, and so you brought be back quickly with your sudden entertainment, and your mischevious grin told me that there was a secret I was not allowed to know, your song a clever distraction.
Or is the message truly as deep, and as simple as you stated it? The colors of the leaves, the branches down, the patches of snow. The leaves have a message for the grass, for the ground, written or sung, these falling notes. We have come; it is cold; let us sleep; soon white and then darkness. We humans don’t see the celebration in it, or we hide our understanding of the message of the leaves, the message supported by the sentry pines, who ever-green, still follow their sisters to the brown grass below. And all the forest knows that Christmas comes, and snow, and death, and life and death and snow.

Always Amazed with You,
Dad

While I'm on this falling leaves kick, I'll post in this thread the poem that came out of the above letter. But first, let's go back a few years to when Jonathan was just a toddler (he's 12 now!), riding on my shoulders. This poem has seen a few edits over the years but has stayed pretty close to the original.

Shoulders and Leaves

Neck muscles ache from the grip
of little legs, knees that tense
with each new glimpse of a glowing
autumn world. You throw wide

your arm and point a pudgy finger
at two girls who toss
a big red ball over still-green grass,
your lips babbling syllables of delight

in a language I once knew.
Solemnly you stare down a fierce-
eyed husky, head tilted as his
with the weight of quiet questions.

You laugh at the sudden hiss
of a tattered tabby cat
arched in bristly orange and white.
High in the oak tree overhead

a red squirrel leaps from branch to branch,
and you return the tree limbs' waving,
while all around us leaves of red and gold
drift downward to the road, falling,

tumbling, rustling through the silence,
slipped from their moorings, softly
as the days unnoticed, one by one,
released by the wind's incessant pull.


David J. Bauman © 2005

Messages


I try to place the cap on my head
but find that it's too small.
My fumbling hand finds reason;

its size mischievously transformed
to fit your little dome. Thirty six years
on your seven-year crown. Mid October,

with it's grays and browns, warms
to Indian Summer, almost green
in the sun of your wide eyes.

Some while ago your brothers stood
shocked at the announcement of Spring--
the year's first robin, suddenly alighting

in your hair. Last Fall as we drove
through the forest’s confetti,
in our own private parade, you told me,

"The leaves are notes." Written to the earth
you said. "But people pick them up
and most of them, are never read."


David J. Bauman © 2004

Nice to re-read these now, and see you working with them in the 'notes from.....' site too. You have such a beautiful talent David...it needs to be shared with so many more people... wee project for you, I want as many as possible on cd/dvd before you come over in July...ok....deal ....

Oh, yes... I did promise you a CD, didn't I? Hmm... The digital voice recording software (at least the free stuff) is such a pain that I haven't gotten far with that project yet.

Thanks for reading, dear. I just posted the latest song from Micah over on our GF Blog! Take a peek!