Dry Leaves and Holly Berries is small collection of poems written while reflecting on aging as a woman. It could also be seen as a memoir in poetry, with poems from and about earlier stages of life that ground the book in the larger historical perspective of the writer’s life and comprehend the wide range of experiences that have shaped that life and that seem key to understanding the final chapters of a woman’s life. The poems touch on subjects that many aging women face - including loneliness, invisibility, disappointment, isolation, touch hunger, and even despair, and as the book progresses the poems also offer a wider perspective of arriving at a state of acceptance, peace, joy, and supreme satisfaction. Much of the acceptance and peace experienced is achieved through the continuity of being in touch with nature and through the ongoing presence of trees as major themes and motifs woven through the writer’s life and poems. Combining a love of words, images, and nature, each poem is accompanied by an original photographic image, copyright Helen Gregory at various dates in the past few decades. I hope sharing my journey helps others travel through these years with grace and a measure of joy.