Tag: October

The Chance of One Sweet Last Hour

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Bending above the spicy woods which blaze,
Arch skies so blue they flash, and hold the sun
Immeasurably far; the waters run
Too slow, so freighted are the river-ways
With gold of elms and birches from the maze
Of forests. Chestnuts, clicking one by one,
Escape from satin burs; her fringes done,
The gentian spreads them out in sunny days,
And, like late revelers at dawn, the chance
Of one sweet, mad, last hour, all things assail,
And conquering, flush and spin; while, to enhance
The spell, by sunset door, wrapped in a veil
Of red and purple mists, the summer, pale,
Steals back alone for one more song and dance.
~Helen Hunt Jackson “October”


And how like a field is the whole sky now
that the maples have shed their leaves, too.
It makes us believers—stationed in groups,
leaning on rakes, looking into space. We rub blisters
over billows of leaf smoke. Or stand alone,
bagging gold for the cold days to come.
~David Baker from “Neighbors in October”

A touch of cold in the Autumn night—
I walked abroad,
And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge
Like a red-faced farmer.
I did not stop to speak, but nodded…
~T.E. Hulme from “Autumn”

We make a dwelling in the evening air, 
In which being there together is enough.
~Wallace Stevens from "Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour"

No other time of year is quite like the end of October. God prepares us for the long haul of winter gray by giving us one last sweet hour of golden memories to bag up as keepsakes for the dark cold nights ahead.

The air is now pristine after a wind and rain storm yesterday. I am finally seeing the golden glow of October.

As Robert Frost wrote, “nothing gold can stay” so I bid this gilded air goodbye for another year. I nod in recognition at the rising moon and wave at bare branches dancing leafless in the wind and celebrate the last sweet hours of October.

It’s now time to dwell together, huddled and cuddled, in the chill of the autumn evening air.

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A Love for Lightness

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…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”

A wind gusts through shedding branches
stripping them bare
and carrying the leaves to fields
far away, to a diverse gathering
they have never known before:
chestnut, cherry, birch, walnut, apple, alder,
maple, parrotia, pear, oak, poplar, cottonwood
suddenly all sharing the same fate and grave,
each wearing a color of its own,
falling, falling, soon to blend with others.

There is an exquisite lightness in letting go
of all that feels familiar and safe,
for reasons none of us can actually comprehend.

Can’t help “falling” in love and falling in leaf…

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A Decade of October Dawns

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It is the exquisite and early hour,
The sudden sunrise reddens the sky.
Through the autumn mist
The garden leaves fall.

Their fall is slow. We can follow them
With our eyes and recognize
The oak by its leaf of copper,
The maple by its leaf of blood.

The last ones, the most rusty
Fall from the bare branches,
But it’s not winter yet.

A fair light sprinkles down on
Nature and in the whole rosy sky
You’d think it was snowing gold.
~François Coppée “October Morning”

This is a compilation of October sunrises from over the past decade, most taken from the same spot in our farm’s backyard. Twice a year, in early October and late May, we may be blessed to see the sun cast a mountain shadow across the clouds in the sky.

October dawns are sometimes flashy and flamboyant, sometimes subtle and somber, but always a harbinger of a time of quiet and reflection.

This year’s mornings are sadly smoky; we raise prayers for a cleansing rain to come soon. We need more than falling leaves to rain down like golden snowflakes. We need precious water drops to wash away all that has become ashen and renew the parched and dying.

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Surrounded By Fog

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The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
~T.S. Eliot from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
~Carl Sandburg “Fog”

When I was young, fog felt oppressive, as sorrow-filled as the fog horns sounding continually in nearby bay.

Now, as I approach my eighth decade of life, I appreciate fog for slowing me down when life is compelling me to rush too fast.

When forced to take time, I begin to notice what I missed before:
a cloud descends to hug and kiss the ground, bejeweling everything it touches – like a cat luxuriously wrapping itself around the world, so soft and gentle.

This October fog makes the dying of autumn subtly beautiful, all gossamer garland, transparent pearls and glowing whiskers.

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Passing Through

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Wild geese fly south, creaking like anguished hinges; along the riverbank the candles of the sumacs burn dull red.
It’s the first week of October.
Season of woolen garments taken out of mothballs;
of nocturnal mists and dew
and slippery front steps, and late-blooming slugs;
of snapdragons having one last fling;
of those frilly ornamental pink-and-purple cabbages that never used to exist, but are all over everywhere now.
~Margaret Atwood from The Blind Assassin

But it was no good trying to tell about the beauty. It was just that life was beautiful beyond belief, and that is a kind of joy which has to be lived.

Sometimes, when they came down from the cirrus levels to catch a better wind, they would find themselves among the flocks of cumulus: huge towers of modeled vapor, looking as white as Monday’s washing and as solid as meringues. Perhaps one of these piled-up blossoms of the sky, these snow-white droppings of a gigantic Pegasus, would lie before them several miles away. They would set their course toward it, seeing it grow bigger silently and imperceptibly, a motionless growth; and then, when they were at it, when they were about to bang their noses with a shock against its seeming solid mass, the sun would dim. Wraiths of mist suddenly moving like serpents of the air would coil about them for a second. Grey damp would be around them, and the sun, a copper penny, would fade away. The wings next to their own wings would shade into vacancy, until each bird was a lonely sound in cold annihilation, a presence after uncreation. And there they would hang in chartless nothing, seemingly without speed or left or right or top or bottom, until as suddenly as ever the copper penny glowed and the serpents writhed. Then, in a moment of time, they would be in the jeweled world once more: a sea under them like turquoise and all the gorgeous palaces of heaven new created, with the dew of Eden not yet dry.
~T.H. White from The Once and Future King

Each day this first week of October, feathered travelers have slipped past us unseen and unheard.  They may stop for a drink in the pond or a bite to eat in the field and woods, but we never know they are there – they are simply passing through.

Others are compelled to announce their journey with great fanfare, usually heard before seen.  The drama of migration becomes bantering conversation from bird to bird, bird to earth, bird to sun, moon and stars, with unseen magnetic forces pointing the way.

When not using voices, their wings sing the air with rhythmic beat and whoosh, like the creaking of rusty hinges.

It reminds me how we are all together here — altogether — even when our voices are raised sharply, our silences brooding, our hurts magnified, our sorrows deep. How we spend our days becomes a matter of debate.

Our destination is not in dispute however.  We’re all heading to the same end to the human story of creation/fall/redemption, no matter how we manage to get there.

It is just that life is beautiful beyond belief, and that is a kind of joy which has to be lived.

So let’s unite our wings and voices in joy: we are just passing through, just passing through, just passing through.

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O Hushed October Morning

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O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
To-morrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.

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…
~Robert Frost “October”

These mornings I wander stunned by light and mist
to see trees tremble inside their loosening cloaks,
a pulsing palette of color ready to detach,
revealing mere bones and branches.

I want it all to be less brief,
leave the leaves attached like a fitted mosaic
rather than randomly falling away.

Their release is not their choosing:
the trees know it is time for slowly letting go~
readying for sleep, for sprouts and buds,
for fresh tapestry to be woven
from October’s leaves lying about their feet.

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Keeping It For Later

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When you are already here 
you appear to be only 
a name that tells of you 
whether you are present or not 
and for now it seems as though 
you are still summer 
still the high familiar 
endless summer 
yet with a glint 
of bronze in the chill mornings 
and the late yellow petals 
of the mullein fluttering 
on the stalks that lean 
over their broken 
shadows across the cracked ground 
but they all know 
that you have come 
the seed heads of the sage 
the whispering birds 
with nowhere to hide you 
to keep you for later 
you who fly with them 
you who are neither 
before nor after 
you who arrive 
with blue plums 
that have fallen through the night 
perfect in the dew
~W.S.Merwin “To the Light of September”

Each month has its own special lighting
though this past luminous September tended to sweep them all.

I loosen my grasp on September as we slip into October bronze.

There must be a place I can hide these riches,
tuck this light away for safe-keeping,
to bring it out on the darkest winter day
and feast upon it.

I do know better;
this glow follows the birds as they fly away.
They keep it with them, wherever they go,
towing it back on their wings come spring.

In the meantime I must remember how
this endless summer defined September.

Dewy Wimpled Evenings

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Give me October’s meditative haze,
Its gossamer mornings, dewy-wimpled eves,
Dewy and fragrant, fragrant and secure,
The long slow sound of farmward-wending wains,
When homely Love sups quiet ‘mid his sheaves,
Sups ‘mid his sheaves, his sickle at his side,
And all is peace, peace and plump fruitfulness.
~Alfred Austin “October”

October’s golden gossamer mornings and evenings with
lambent light on leaves and fields and clouds.

We, the homely, are illuminated, plump and fruitful.

How Love turns the ordinary to magic.

Man Scything Hay by Todd Reifers

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Simply Glad

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I shall open my eyes and ears.
Once every day I shall simply stare
at a tree, a flower, a cloud, or a person.
I shall not then be concerned at all to ask what they are
but simply be glad that they are.
I shall joyfully allow them the mystery of what C.S. Lewis calls
their “divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic” existence.
~Clyde Kilby in “Amazed in the Ordinary”

An open heart is alive to wonder, to the sheer marvel of “isness.”
It is remarkable that the world is,
that we are here,
that we can experience it.
This world is not ordinary.
Indeed, what is remarkable is that
it could ever look ordinary to us.

An open heart knows “radical amazement.”
An open heart and gratitude go together.
We can feel this in our bodies.
In the moments in my life
when I have been most grateful,
I have felt a swelling,
almost a bursting in my chest.
~Marcus Borg from The Heart of Christianity

photo by Nicole Moore
photo by Nicole Moore
photo by Nicole Moore
photo by Nicole Moore

Most of the time I’m sleep walking through each day, oblivious, as if in dense fog with unseeing wide-open eyes.  There is a slow motion quality to time as it flows from one hour to the next to the next. I stumble through life asleep, the path indiscernible, my future uncertain, my purpose illusive.

Am I continually dozing or shall I rouse to the radical amazement of each moment?

When I’m simply glad, everything becomes more vivid, as in a dream — the sounds of geese flying overhead, the smell of the farm, the layers of a foggy landscape, the taste of an autumn apple right from the tree, the string of fog-drop pearls on a spider web, the intensity of every breath, the purpose for being.

So wake me -please- to dream some more.   
I want to chew on it again and again, simply savoring and simply glad.

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Almost Eternal, But Not Quite

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Again I resume the long
lesson: how small a thing
can be pleasing, how little
in this hard world it takes
to satisfy the mind
and bring it to its rest.

Within the ongoing havoc
the woods this morning is
almost unnaturally still.
Through stalled air, unshadowed
light, a few leaves fall
of their own weight.

                                       The sky
is gray. It begins in mist
almost at the ground
and rises forever. The trees
rise in silence almost
natural, but not quite,
almost eternal, but
not quite.

                      What more did I
think I wanted? Here is
what has always been.
Here is what will always
be. Even in me,
the Maker of all this
returns in rest, even
to the slightest of His works,
a yellow leaf slowly
falling, and is pleased.
~Wendell Berry “VII”

What more did I think I wanted?

To know that as long as I’m able to hold on,
I can be a spot of light in a dark and bleak world.
Once I let go,
it is finished and worthwhile,
seeing His knowing smile.

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