Louise Glück - Fun with Chairs, Oct 18

Louise Glück won the Nobel Prize this year!!! Thrilling! Perhaps a challenging time requires a challenging poet? Personally I think this is hopeful news. I thought this piece felt like this time of year and this year in general.

BURNING LEAVES

The dead leaves catch fire quickly.

And they burn quickly; in no time at all,

they change from something to nothing.

Midday. The sky is cold, blue;

under the fire, there's gray earth.

How fast it all goes, how fast the smoke clears.

And where the pile of leaves was,

an emptiness that suddenly seems vast.

Across the road, a boy’s watching.

He stays a long time, watching the leaves burn.

Maybe this is how you'll know when the earth is dead—

it will ignite.