Red Flash, Green Flash

Missouri photographer Jay Beets says,
"The crazy color of Fall!
. . . I saw a tree face this morning."
Could it be Abraham Lincoln? Or the Man in the Moon?"

I posted this painting early last autumn . . .

First sign of fall: the rogue / rouge tree!

In the Bois du Boulogne, 1933
by Camille Bombois, 1883 - 1970

and just knew that I was going to have to repost
when I saw these photographs that my friend Jay took
at the end of last season ~ 2 November 2013:

Life Imitates Art!
Jay's photos are also a perfect match for this poem by Derek Walcott:

The Green Flash

le rayon vert

And the sea’s skin heaves, saurian,
and the spikes of the agave bristle
like a tusked beast bowing to charge
tonight the full moon will soar floating
without any moral or simile
the wind will bend the longbows of the arching casuarinas
the lizard will still scuttle
and the sun will sink silently with a stake in its eye
bleeding behind the shrouding sail
of a skeletal schooner.
You can feel the earth cooling,
you can feel its myth cooling
and watch your own heart go out like the red throbbing dot
of a hospital machine, with a green flash
next to Pigeon Island.

by Derek Walcott, b. 1930
Saint Lucian poet and playwright; professor at the University of Essex
1992 Nobel Prize Recipient
author, most recently, of White Egrets
[see also "Love After Love"]

Thanks again to Jay
for these amazing flashes of red and green!