A wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and all the leaves away, and the trees stand. I think, I too, have known autumn too long. ~e.e. cummings
…we invite him purely and simply, so that our thought of him is an invitation, a longing cry. It is as when one is in extreme thirst, ill with thirst; then one no longer thinks of the act of drinking in relation to oneself, nor even of the act of drinking in a general way. One merely thinks of water, actual water itself, but the image of water is like a cry from our whole being. ~Simone Weil from “Waiting for God”
A weft of leafless spray Woven fine against the gray Of the autumnal day, And blurred along those ghostly garden tops Clusters of berries crimson as the drops That my heart bleeds when I remember How often, in how many a far November, Of childhood and my children’s childhood I was glad, With the wild rapture of the Fall, Of all the beauty, and of all The ruin, now so intolerably sad. ~William Dean Howells “November: Impression”
It rained all weekend, but today the peaked roofs are as dusty and warm as the backs of old donkeys tied in the sun. So much alike are our houses, our lives. Under every eave— leaf, cobweb, and feather; and for each front yard one sentimental maple, who after a shower has passed, weeps into her shadow for hours. ~Ted Kooser “A Monday in May”
It is a blustery and soaking start to the University’s academic year:Â we enter autumn with no little trepidation…
Enter autumn as you would a closing door. Quickly, cautiously. Look for something inside that promises color, but be wary of its cast–a desolate reflection, an indelible tint. ~Pamela Steed Hill from “September Pitch”
Last night the rain spoke to me slowly, saying, what joy to come falling out of the brisk cloud, to be happy again in a new way on the earth! That’s what it said as it dropped, smelling of iron, and vanished like a dream of the ocean into the branches and the grass below. Then it was over. The sky cleared. I was standing under a tree. The tree was a tree with happy leaves, and I was myself, and there were stars in the sky that were also themselves at the moment at which moment my right hand was holding my left hand which was holding the tree which was filled with stars and the soft rain – imagine! imagine! the long and wondrous journeys still to be ours. ~Mary Oliver
I went to bed and woke in the middle of the night thinking I heard someone cry, thinking I myself was weeping, and I felt my face and it was dry. Then I looked at the window and thought: Why, yes, it’s just the rain, the rain, always the rain, and turned over, sadder still, and fumbled about for my dripping sleep and tried to slip it back on. ~Ray Bradbury
…now the cordial clouds have shut all in, And gently swells the wind to say all’s well; The scattered drops are falling fast and thin, Some in the pool, some in the flower-bell.
Drip drip the trees for all the country round, And richness rare distills from every bough; The wind alone it is makes every sound, Shaking down crystals on the leaves below. ~Henry David Thoreau from “The Summer Rain”
A soft day, thank God! A wind from the south With a honey’d mouth; A scent of drenching leaves, Briar and beech and lime, White elderflower and thyme, And the soaking grass smells sweet, Crushed by my two bare feet, While the rain drips, Drips, drips, drips from the eaves.
A soft day, thank God! The hills wear a shroud Of silver cloud; The web the spider weaves Is a glittering net; The woodland path is wet, And the soaking earth smells sweet Under my two bare feet, And the rain drips, Drips, drips, drips from the leaves. ~ Winifred M. Letts (1882-1972), English poet
Barnstorming 