"Requiem" by John Updike

the photograph is not an illustration; rather it is a visualization of my perception of ideas within the text
the poem, as I read it, accords with my sentiments
but John Updike was among the demi-deities of the 20th century
he will not be forgotten; but history can be difficult and there is always a tidal fall and rise,
but despair or better, the self regarding one's own being can only evoke dismay, unless it is a fool that gazes at the image

Requiem

It came to me the other day

Were I to die, no one would say,

“Oh, what a shame! So young, so full

Of promise --depths unplumbable!”

Instead, a shrug and tearless eyes

Will greet my overdue demise;

The wide response will be I know,

“I thought he died a while ago.”

“For life’s a shabby subterfuge,

And death is real, and dark, and huge.

The shock of it will register

Nowhere but where it will occur.

John Updike in forthcoming collection , "Endpoint and Other Poems"

how playful Nature is

a yellow leaf smote the driver

As the driver went north on Park Avenue, a bright yellow leaf fell onto the car's hood. The driver was returning from a visit to a physician and felt the leaf. How strange. It smote her chest but it was on the hood that the brightness fell and it was swept away by the car's motion, yet strangely it was felt as a blow to her left chest and the pain caused tears to run down her cheek.

fall: a fairy tale or not

. . . and the grass talked of many things of what had been and what is, but little did it know what was to become of it. Surrounded now by new surprising colors, the fronds shivered and trembled and delighted in the redness and brownness and the warmth of a blue-hot day. but it was fall, and fall, they sensed, was a time before the blazing glory would be extinguished. While their bodies would still exist, they would die or become dormant and sleep until spring might tickle them, but they did not know if spring was a certainty. They knew what had been but they were uncertain about the future. But the moment was blissful and bliss is but a moment and cannot be understood

Leaves: cycle of life, spring

The baby leaf does not know what will happen to it; it follows its predestined path, step by step until it is fully developed. It cannot foretell its tenacity. It will be a "ghost leaf," a white leaf, frail but strong, a leaf that will remain on the tree throughout the cold bitter months of winter and only drop off when the next generation has completed its appearance. Can the "ghost leaf" recall its joyous beginnings, when sun and warmth and the greening that surrounds it made it gush with sap?

A Specimen: a frail leaf turned into art by L. C. Tiffany

Nature hangs its garments out to dry before winter arrives: an "equivalent"

The Golden Necklace: fall and its gifts

Natural architecture: nature constructs a portal