Passing of Time
© Frank H. Jump
The first shy blush of autumn
Flushed across the long faces
Of lush & lumbering late summer maples
Framing the valleys near North Scranton.
Rocky bluffs along the byways
Still bleed from the blinding torrents of Irene,
Shiny and black in the skewed & slanting sun.
Rebounding registrants reconnoiter their rolling reflections
Returning from respites at home
Or remote retreats with relatives.
Cars flashing past these sedimentary mirrors-
Surfaces which sometimes reveal fossil shells & skeletons
From a sometime Cenozoic life perhaps
Once a pre-Sargassoan northwestern sea floor.
Within weeks a bashful blush becomes a crimson flood
Bordering on bittersweet, burnt orange and soon ochre-
An evanescent process but picoseconds compared
To the protracted persistence from primordial progressions
Of paleolithic petrification.