Flung Weed Unto Weed

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The thistledown’s flying, though the winds are all still,
On the green grass now lying, now mounting the hill,
The spring from the fountain now boils like a pot;
Through stones past the counting it bubbles red-hot.

The ground parched and cracked is like overbaked bread,
The greensward all wracked is, bents dried up and dead.
The fallow fields glitter like water indeed,
And gossamers twitter, flung from weed unto weed.

Hill-tops like hot iron glitter bright in the sun,
And the rivers we’re eying burn to gold as they run;
Burning hot is the ground, liquid gold is the air;
Whoever looks round sees Eternity there.
~John Clare “Autumn”
As October wraps up here,
there are golden mornings,
golden nightfalls
and golden in-betweens,
all compressed
into diminishing daylight hours
more precious than gold~
may this last forever
or at least until November…
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My Barren Skin

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And then in the falling comes a rising,
as of the bass coming up for autumn’s last insects
struggling amid the mosaic of leaves on the lake’s surface.
We express it as the season of lacking, but what is this nakedness
— the unharvested corn frost-shriveled but still a little golden
under the diffuse light of a foggy sky,
the pin oak’s newly stark web of barbs, the woodbine’s vines
shriven of their scarlet and left askew in the air
like the tangle of threads on the wall’s side
of the castle tapestry—what is it but greater intimacy,
the world slackening its grip on the veils, letting them slump
to the floor in a heap of sodden colors, and saying,
this is me, this is my skeletal muscle,
my latticework of bones, my barren winter skin,
this is it and if you love me, know that this is what you love.
~Laura Fargas “October Struck”

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The Pulse of Day

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Praise the wet snow
       falling early.
Praise the shadow
       my neighbor’s chimney casts on the tile roof
even this gray October day that should, they say,
have been golden.
               Praise
the invisible sun burning beyond
      the white cold sky, giving us
light and the chimney’s shadow.
Praise
god or the gods, the unknown,
that which imagined us, which stays
our hand,
our murderous hand,
                   and gives us
still,
in the shadow of death,
           our daily life,
           and the dream still
of goodwill, of peace on earth.
Praise
flow and change, night and
the pulse of day.
~Denise Levertov from “Gloria”

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The Light of Old October

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In Heaven, it is always Autumn
~John Donne

 

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He found himself wondering at times,
especially in the autumn,
about the wild lands,
and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams.
~J.R.R. Tolkien Fellowship of the Rings

 

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Is not this a true autumn day?
Just the still melancholy that I love –
that makes life and nature harmonise.
The birds are consulting about their migrations,
the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay,
and begin to strew the ground,
that one’s very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air,
while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit.
Delicious autumn!
My very soul is wedded to it,
and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth
seeking the successive autumns.
~George Eliot

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Such days of autumnal decline hold a strange mystery which adds to the gravity of all our moods.
~Charles Nodier

 

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I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.
~L.M. Montgomery Anne of Green Gables

 

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I was drinking in the surroundings:
air so crisp you could snap it with your fingers
and greens in every lush shade imaginable
offset by autumnal flashes of red and yellow.
~Wendy Delsol

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Just as a painter needs light in order to put the finishing touches to his picture,
so I need an inner light, which I feel I never have enough of in the autumn.
~Leo Tolstoy

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After the keen still days of September,
the October sun filled the world with mellow warmth…
The maple tree in front of the doorstep burned like a gigantic red torch.
The oaks along the roadway glowed yellow and bronze.
The fields stretched like a carpet of jewels,
emerald and topaz and garnet.
Everywhere she walked the color shouted and sang around her…
In October any wonderful unexpected thing might be possible.
~Elizabeth George Speare  The Witch of Blackbird Pond

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It was one of those sumptuous days
when the world is full of autumn muskiness
and tangy, crisp perfection:
vivid blue sky, deep green fields,
leaves in a thousand luminous hues.
It is a truly astounding sight
when every tree in a landscape becomes individual,
when each winding back highway
and plump hillside is suddenly and infinitely splashed
with every sharp shade that nature can bestow
– flaming scarlet, lustrous gold, throbbing vermilion, fiery orange.
~Bill Bryson

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The ripe, the golden month has come again…
Frost sharps the middle music of the seasons,
and all things living on the earth turn home again…
the fields are cut, the granaries are full,
the bins are loaded to the brim with fatness,
and from the cider-press the rich brown oozings of the York Imperials run.
The bee bores to the belly of the grape,
the fly gets old and fat and blue,
he buzzes loud, crawls slow,
creeps heavily to death on sill and ceiling,
the sun goes down in blood and pollen
across the bronzed and mown fields of the old October.
~Thomas Wolfe

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A Psalm of Geese

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A psalm of geese
labours overland

cajoling each other
near half…

The din grew immense.
No need to look up.

All you had to do
was sit in the sound

and put it down
as best you could…

It’s not a lonesome sound
but a panic,

a calling out to the others
to see if they’re there;

it’s not the lung-full thrust of the prong of arrival
in late October;
not the slow togetherness

of the shape they take
on the empty land
on the days before Christmas:

this is different, this is a broken family,
the young go the wrong way,

then at daybreak, rise up and follow their elders
again filled with dread,
at the returning sound of the journey ahead.
~Dermot Healy from A Fool’s Errand (a book poem in the shape of a V about geese migration)

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The Core of the Heart

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October is marigold, and yet
A glass half full of wine left out

To the dark heaven all night, by dawn
Has dreamed a premonition

Of ice across its eye as if
The ice-age had begun its heave.

The lawn overtrodden and strewn
From the night before, and the whistling green

Shrubbery are doomed.

…a fist of cold
Squeezes the fire at the core of the world,

Squeezes the fire at the core of the heart,
And now it is about to start.
~Ted Hughes from “October Dawn”

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October Quivering

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photo by Josh Scholten

 

photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

 

photos by Josh Scholten
photos by Josh Scholten

 

I remember it
as October days are always remembered,

cloudless,
maple-flavored,
the air gold and so clean
it quivers.
~Leif Enger, Peace Like a River 

 

photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

A Wider Horizon

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October is the fallen leaf,
but it is also a wider horizon more clearly seen.
It is the distant hills once more in sight,
and the enduring constellations above them once again.
~ Hal Borland

I bid October good-bye reluctantly
to face forward into the November darkening .
Morning and evening chores with flashlight in hand,
I follow its bouncing beam down slick farm paths,
merging with surrounding shadow.

Summer is mere memory now;
all color drained from
leaves fallen, dissolving
in frost and rain.

When the light rises on the hills,
I feel a veil lift enough
that I am able to see
so far beyond my reach.
The horizon extends on and on forever
and I will endure another winter.

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October Funeral

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October is nature’s funeral month.
Nature glories in death more than in life.
The month of departure is more beautiful
than the month of coming – October than May.
Every green thing
loves to die in bright colors.
~Henry Ward Beecher

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A Soft October Fog

fog101914closeThe 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”

When I was young, fog felt oppressive, as mournful as the fog horns sounding continually in the nearby bay.
Now in late middle age, I appreciate fog for slowing me down when life compels me to rush too fast.
When forced to take time, I begin to notice what I missed before:
clouds descend to hug and kiss the ground to bejewel everything they touch.
Today the dead and dying became glorious in subtle beauty,
the farm became all gossamer garland and transparent pearls…

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