There was something about that October day,
that earthy scent in the air, those golden rays beaming down in columns, 
that stayed with me as Mom and I watched the combine in the field.

She had come for a short visit,
and we walked out and stood by the fence line.
Grasshoppers hopped all over the tall dry weeds near the fence.
We watched the tall corn stalks coming down
and waved to Sam as he whirred past us in the John Deere—
I held up his brown bag lunch, letting him know to stop next round.

After handing off his lunch, Mom and I walked the farm and talked.
She told stories of her childhood days and the effects
of the Great Depression on her life as the sun rays crowned her head

in golden light. Big fluffy clouds took turns 
rolling past the sun. She looked like a beautiful painting
from the Renaissance era.

By the end of the day, our hair was full of autumn gusts
and my mind, of amazement of all she’d been through—
now these memories return each autumn 

as colorful and vivid as the red apples on my tree. The tree 
that was standing there 25 years ago—overflowing with fruit.
She took some home to bake Dad a pie.

Like the season’s ending, on goes time, so comes death.
Today the October sky is heavy gray
but the fields and geese are still singing earth’s refrain,

“Time for harvest. Time to leave.”
And I sit here with this knowledge that mother’s planting, kernels of love
in the soil of our hearts, produced a harvest a hundredfold.