Unleaving

I’ve mentioned one of my favorite poems, and certainly one of my favorite seasons, on my LJ before. You may recall a photo I shot when I was on vacation earlier this summer:

I kept those leaves, though they’re slowly losing the colors that made them so striking to me. I thought of them immediately for the most recent Work of Art challenge, when we were asked to [c]reate a work of art inspired by nature. Incorporate one or more found natural objects (leaves, rocks, twigs, dirt, etc.).

Here’s that poem I love, written by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Spring and Fall: To a young child

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

I hope my art piece, titled “Unleaving” after the word coined by Hopkins, conveys some of the beauty, humanity, and mortality of his poem and my favorite season, autumn.

(click here to see a larger version on a black background)

You can see other submissions for this challenge on the Work of Art blog.