Poetry Stretch Results - October

The challenge this week was to write a poem about October. Here are the results.

Laura Purdie Salas left a bevy of poems in the comments!

October Wears…

a pink satin nightgown
each morning,
goodbye colors
bleeding brightly
beside her black coffee.

At noon, she slips on
a Parrish blue hat and
golden shawl and meets
Summer for pasta salad,
talking about long days past.

By evening, she has changed
into navy velvet,
smoke perfume,
and diamond choker,
determined to show
her beauty is not
confined to sunlight.

--Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved

October…

dances all day
a clattering whirl
of click-clacking
pile-stacking
gold skeleton leaves

then
pours into night
to the silent sky
to the high-flying
summer’s-dying
wild goose cry

--Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved

By October...

My lunch balance is zero.
My shoes are sloppy.
My jeans have hot chocolate stains.
My classes are boring, even French!
(Est-ce que je peux faire une sieste pendant la classe?)
My teachers all know me.

I’m ready for summer.

--Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved

Sam left this poem in the comments.

It is cold enough to make me
try to keep my feet dry,
but not get too mad if my foot slips into the October river.

No river is as beautiful as my
October river.
The sun is right, the leaves are right, the snakes are not hogging the place like they did all summer.

I take my boat, balancing
and muscling it down the rocky, trashy bank
to the edge where it
slips into the October river.

Diane Mayr of Random Noodling shares a poem entitled October Dusk. She also left this poem in the comments.

October

Honey dipped from a pot
by the hand of autumn is
swirled through a teacup.
Black tea sweetened
lightly, cooled ever
so slightly. You sip
the honeyed liquid
slowly, swishing
it around your mouth,
squeezing it between
your teeth. You swallow,
and underneath the
sweetness you can faintly
taste the acerbity of what
remains in the bottom
of your cup.

Susan Taylor Brown of Susan Writes shares a poem entitled October.

Jane Yolen left this poem in the comments.

Leaf Peepers

We have already seen
the first hardy thrust
of red maple leaves
before the Leaf Peepers arrive.
They come in buses with blue-tinted windows,
and license plates from places
all the way down to Florida.
They come through only once,
to view the big picture, the panorama,
the full palette of Fall.
I wish they could understand
That autumn is a glorious unfolding,
a slow strip tease
of green to gold, to orange, to purple, to red.
This week the aspen on the corner
by the VFW building changes
like a shy young bride.
Tomorrow a maple does the full monty
in the space between my house and my neighbor’s.
We New Englanders are not leaf peepers,
never claimed to be any such.
Hell--we are total autumn voyeurs.

© 2009 Jane Yolen, all rights reserved

Tiel Aisha Ansari of Knocking From Inside shares a poem entitled Elbow Month.

Kate Coombs of Book Aunt left this poem in the comments.

Who Walks?

Who walks the blue twilight,
footsteps cool as a shiver?

Who drifts like October wind,
stirring sorrowful leaves?

Who searches for lost days,
once bright as pumpkins?

Who fades by morning,
Leaving only bone dust?

Who has no name,
who has no stone?

--Kate Coombs (Book Aunt)

Cindy Blair left this poem in the comments.

Simply Autumn

Autumn ascends
from flowering summer
bringing opposing
feelings to all.

If you love
hot sultry summer,
you just might loathe
leaves when they fall.

They always signal
cold shivery winter;
nature's long fervent
motherly call.

Elaine Magliaro of Wild Rose Reader shares a number of fall poems, including a new acrostic for October.

Michael Coldham-Fussell of Rivers of Meaning left this poem in the comments.

An Ode to October

The names are out of place,
From September to December;
You should be eighth not tenth,
My dearest friend October.

How mean it is to have a name,
That doesn't mean your whereabouts;
But has you shuffled two months forward,
Unaware that there are doubts.

So here's my plan to right this wrong,
And have your name sound sober;
The year must always start in March,
With apologies owed to October.

© 11-10-09 Michael Coldham-Fussell

Tess of Written for Children shares a poem entitled Ghazal for October.

Here's one of the poems I dashed off this evening.

October Field

abandoned tomatoes
drooping from the vine
peas long picked over
my once lush garden
returning to earth
a richness of rot
save for ripe, round
orange giants
growing and glowing
until fall’s first frost

It's not too late if you still want to play. Leave me a note about your poem and I'll add it to the list.