Time and Images 4

Haze Gold

Sun, you may send your haze gold

Filling the fall afternoon

With a flimmer of many gold feathers.

Leaves, you may linger in the fall sunset

Like late lingering butterflies before frost.

Treetops, you may sift the sunset cross-lights
Spreading a loose checkerwork of gold and shadow.

Winter comes soon--shall we save all this, lay it by,

Can we keep all of these haze gold yellows?

-- Carl Sandburg