...catching the light

I was determined to try to capture that moment...
when the angle of the declining sun...
set the foliage afire in it's autumn splendor...
I'd missed it twice, so I planned ahead...



and arrived at the park, sometime after 3 PM...
while the sun was still, "overhead"...



and shadows were just starting to lengthen...



and the leaves were just starting to glow...



as it progressed, the angle of light illuminated the trees...
& sent beams of sunlight across the grass that had been in shadow...



immolating the outstretched arms of trees...
dappling the trunks and ground with shadow & light shafts...



as I turned for home, the sun now low enough to light only tree tops...
lit up the turning leaves down the street...
making a kaleidoscope of distant trees...



now, with the sun rapidly dropping...
only the leaves of trees on my street were lit...
but what lighting !

I walked on into the deepening shadows...
accompanied by the loud chatter of birds...
settling into the sun-lit leaves for the night...
a raucous, but joyful establishment of the best roosting places...



the final glory... a Chinese pistachio across the street...

between a dead sycamore and a power pole...
amidst more than the usual residential clutter...
it blazes away, consumed in the final moments of the light...
much more intensely than at any other time of the day...
when it merely smolders...

God is good...All the time...
but especially in the fall...