Tag: fall

Begin the Hours Slow

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 dogwoodoct1
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O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.
~Robert Frost “October”
I long to be beguiled by slower days;
each leaf of mine dropped
one at a time, sorely missed
until there is none of me left.
Slow me down slowly,
hushed and enchanted.
dogwoodoct3
scanlon4
3rgrapes

A Reason None of Us Knows

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shuksan2

…I have been younger in October
than in all the months of spring
walnut and may leaves the color
of shoulders at the end of summer
a month that has been to the mountain
and become light there
the long grass lies pointing uphill
even in death for a reason
that none of us knows…

my love is for lightness
of touch foot feather
the day is yet one more yellow leaf
and without turning I kiss the light
by an old well on the last of the month
gathering wild rose hips
in the sun
~W. S. Merwin from “The Love of October” from Migration

 

This warm wind gusts through shedding branches
stripping them bare
and carrying the leaves yards
far away, to a diverse gathering
they have never known:
chestnut, cherry, birch, walnut, apple,
maple, parrotia, pear, oak, poplar
suddenly sharing the same fate and grave,
each wearing a color of its own,
soon to blend with the others
as all slowly melt to brown.

There is lightness in the letting go,
for reasons none of us knows.

 

grassuphill

octleaf12

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sunrise109159

Oneliness

barnstormingblog3 Comments

danglingleaf1

l (a

le
af
fa
ll

s)
one
l
iness…

~e.e. cummings

suspendedleaf1

octoberdawn2

octoberdawn

So many feel they are the only one
to fall
until they land in a cushion of others
comforted.

Some dangle suspended
twisting and turning in the slightest breeze
not knowing when the fall will come.

I know I’m both~
one alone
and many together

held by a slender silken thread
until the moment comes
when I’m let go.

suspendedleaf4

Let Fall Your Shadows

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sunrise913152

sunrise91315

geese913

 

Lord: it is time. The summer was immense.
Let fall your shadows on the sundials,
upon the fields let loose your winds.

Command the last fruits to be full;
give them just two more southern days,
Press them to completion, and chase the last
sweetness into the heavy wine.

Who has no house now – he will never build.
Whoever is alone now, long will so remain;
will stay awake, and read, and write long letters
and wander the alleys up and down,
restless, as the leaves are drifting.
~Rainer Maria Rilke “Autumn Day”

 

This sadness that fall brings
is less about the ending of a long hot dry summer
and more about deepening shadows,
the fullness of harvest,
the drifting and dying to self.

I am misty in memories
of children dressed for school
eating around a full kitchen table,
of chores done hurriedly on frosty mornings,
of afternoons darkening too early
from drizzly clouds,
of nights under heavy comforters.

Lord, it is time.  Too soon, too soon.
Help ready me.

 

fallcrocus

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dogwood911

Relishing

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sunrise101214

The birds do not sing in these mornings. The skies
are white all day. The Canadian geese fly over
high up in the moonlight with the lonely sound
of their discontent. Going south. Now the rains
and soon the snow. The black trees are leafless,
the flowers gone. Only cabbages are left
in the bedraggled garden. Truth becomes visible,
the architecture of the soul begins to show through.
God has put off his panoply and is at home with us.
We are returned to what lay beneath the beauty.
We have resumed our lives. There is no hurry now.
We make love without rushing and find ourselves
afterward with someone we know well. Time to be
what we are getting ready to be next. This loving,
this relishing, our gladness, this being puts down
roots and comes back again year after year.
~Jack Gilbert “Half the Truth”

 

westernsky

A Kindly and Homely Month

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sunrise1019

frontyardwalnut

There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on,
and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October.
The sunshine is peculiarly genial;
and in sheltered places, as on the side of a bank, or of a barn or house,
one becomes acquainted and friendly with the sunshine.
It seems to be of a kindly and homely nature.
And the green grass strewn with a few withered leaves looks the more green and beautiful for them.
~Nathaniel Hawthorne

If I were a month, I would want to be October…

A kindly and homely nature, with comfortable temperatures and a bit foggy,
with flashes of burnt umber, misty gold in the relinquishing light.

mistybarn

mapledown

It’s Life We Harvest

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mapleWWU
vine maple WWU

madronaberries
madrona tree berries –WWU

…still it’s not death that spends
So tenderly this treasure
To leaf-rich golden winds,
But life in lavish measure.

No, it’s not death this year
Since then and all the pain.
It’s life we harvest here
(Sun on the crimson vine).
The garden speaks your name.
We drink your joys like wine.
~May Sarton, from “The First Autumn”

burning bush-- WWU
burning bush– WWU
red fringed maple leaf --WWU
red fringed maple leaf –WWU

Is there something finished?  And some new beginning on the way?

I cried over beautiful things, knowing no beautiful thing lasts…
~Carl Sandburg, from “Falltime” and “Autumn Movement”

wwuheartleaf
WWU tree -Haskell Plaza

WWU tree

wwuyellow
WWU tree in Haskell plaza

I praise the fall:

It is the human season. On this sterile air
Do words outcarry breath: the sound goes on and on.
I hear a dead man’s cry from autumn long since gone.

I cry to you beyond upon this bitter air.
~Archiblad MacLeish from “Immortal Autumn”

College Way, WWU
College Way, WWU

 

 

 

Holding On

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photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

Many a night I woke to the murmur of paper and knew (Dad) was up, sitting in the kitchen with frayed King James – oh, but he worked that book; he held to it like a rope ladder.
Leif Enger in Peace Like a River

Some nights are like that.  The footing underneath is loose and my feet are slipping.  I have the distinct feeling of plummeting while lying completely still in bed.  I feel the need to grab hold of something, anything, in order to avoid free falling… to what?  to where?  My dream is so vivid, the sudden descent so visceral, I wake sweating with my heart racing.

So I grab fast to the Word –a woven rope of faith– frayed though it may be with nicks and scars and scorches, meant for clinging for safety.  It is a ladder to security, challenging to ascend, difficult to hold on to without accumulating blisters and scrapes along the way.  The going is tough, sometimes too daunting for my limitations.  The familiar ground below appears farther and farther away.

So I keep going, hand over hand, page over page, word beside word.  There is only up now.  It is the only way.

photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

Shake Me Like a Cry

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The scarlet of maples can shake me like a cry
Of bugles going by.
And my lonely spirit thrills
to see the frosty asters like smoke
upon the hills.
~ William Bliss Carman

It is like the blowing of taps, this last blast of color before the rains and winter.  There is quickened heartbeat and choking back tears at seeing the vividness outlined by robins egg-blue sky, each maple a torch aflame about to burn down to ash and smoke.

The bright palette is too much to take in all at once.  If only it could spread out through the year and not last only for a week or two when I’m relegated indoors in long work hours and weekend harvest preservation of fruits and vegetables.  I so wish to be two places at once, to be two people, to be more than I am.

So I must harvest autumn in words and pictures, just like preserving the garden and orchard in jars and bags, someday to refresh and restore when gray pervades and mildew threatens to overpower, when hunger for fall shakes me wholly, like a sob.

Like a cry for how it used to be and how it one day will be again.

There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October.
~Nathaniel Hawthorne