Fall is my favorite season. I'm so grateful I still live in an area where the leaves change color. Fall poetry inspires me almost as much as the season. I could live on a steady diet of Frost during these months. I've read and re-read October, Gathering Leaves, After Apple-picking, and Nothing Gold Can Stay. I've also spent time perusing Keats and Ode to Autumn.
So, now that you're thinking fall, let's write about that. Leave me a note about your poem and I'll share the results here later this week.
I'm contemplating a line from a poem posted by Jama last Friday: "all these golden losses." For children this season is one of plenty, of chills, thrills and anticipation, but we adults can’t help but sense the daily dying. Maybe that’s why so many of us worship at the Halloween altar–-it takes our minds off the inevitable. So here, my middle-aging eye on autumn...
ReplyDeletefallen
even the fig tree
drops its leaves in naked knowing:
slowly the world burns
to cold dry ash
Love that, Heidi.
ReplyDeleteHere's mine:
Five Thoughts About Autumn
1.
Leaves crisp from the edges in,
curling up like a baby’s fist
as he sleeps.
2.
Orange is the vanguard, then red,
maples and sumac take the point,
then yellows hold the rear.
3.
Soon the leaf peepers will arrive,
noisy flocks of them in long buses,
windows tinted blue.
4.
Like celebrities, the geese
leave the party before the final course,
off to somewhere tonier.
5.
Poets write elegies about the season
but I thrive in its presents,
unwrapping winter, then spring.
©2011 Jane Yolen, all rights reserved
Those are wonderful! Fall is my favorite season, too, Tricia.
ReplyDeleteHere's an offering from my neck of the woods.
Late Fall in Appalachia
Ruby,
russet,
raisin,
roan,
crimson
carpet
shell-shaped hills.
Marmalade glaze,
drizzled,
fills
gaps and valleys
with amber light.
Ginger douses
honey flames
while
lemony embers
light
cinnamon sticks.
Aubergine
shadows
shift with
burnished copper,
bronzed
in stolen sunsets.
©2011 Robyn Hood Black
all rights reserved
Among all the beauty, I must write this time about the pumpkins I have so faithfully nurtured this summer, through drought and so on. They were small, but they were beautiful to watch grow and flourish. Ah, nature!
ReplyDeleteI had planned to make a beautiful pie,
and even the jack o’ lantern will have to wait.
Although the net said to leave them long
my pumpkins have suffered a terrible fate.
The fault is those animals that live out of doors,
and although we’ve been know to feed them
peanuts and corn and all manner of fruit,
they’ve taken my pumpkins and eaten ‘em.
New to Autumn
ReplyDeleteThe sun curls up on the horizon like a squirrel
as the wind swings her skirts, walking through leaves.
In the backyard, deer eat crab apples and lounge around
as if they were tourists. The biggest buck stares
his disdain, tilting his antler crown higher.
I'm not sure I belong in a crisp season that calls
of dying and death while composing an orange craze
of life like fire and fire like life. I empty the sprinklers
and buy boots, feeling stodgy beside this pirate
of a landscape with his gold teeth and red scarves.
--Kate Coombs, 2011, all rights reserved
Greetings, All--Some of you have already read this poem...
ReplyDeleteEquinox
Halloween
is coming—
I feel it
in the air—
pumpkins tumbling,
dry leaves
crunching,
apples everywhere.
Windy days,
frigid nights,
shadows on
the bog—
soon the sky
will tuck
the sun
inside a
wintry fog.
Stalks of corn
without their cobs—
just rows and rows
of straw—
pumpkins tumbling
dry leaves
crunching
tell me
it is fall!
Wonderful stuff, ladies!
ReplyDeleteLeaves
We are leaves.
Let us lie.
Put away the gathering rake
and the green plastic grave.
We are neither dead,
nor dying.
There is worth in us yet.
See how we nourish the soil,
the worms and the beetles,
how we warm the grass
and cast a pleasing view
to the observer's eye.
We are neither dead,
nor dying.
We are leaves.
Let us lie.
c2011 Barbara J. Turner, all rights reserved
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteSo many things to observe during fall. Thank you for sharing, everyone. My students will be reading your work!
ReplyDeleteEvery year I take my students on a fall walk. We observe the meadow, field, and woods along our school boundary. We note our observations in our writer’s notebooks. When we come back, I ask my students to look through their notebook, then capture the essence of fall in a single sentence.
In subsequent lessons, authors revisit their sentences and discuss the power of action verbs, how to extend ideas with details, personification, analogies, etc. We revise the order over and over to see if there is some way that sounds more poetic. Below are some samples collected through the years from students aged 8 to 11.
A brownish oak leaf lies on the ground with white frost outlining it like lace.
The giant oak tree with the shape of a moon in it waits for fall to be over.
Stepped-on leaves sound like potato chips being eaten.
Dead branches reach out for someone to comfort them.
Fall is a picture no artist can draw.
The berries on the bare bushes look like little red marbles.
A few tiny purple flowers still dot a meadow of brown.
In the half-leafed tree, an abandon bird nest sits.
The leaves are different shapes today than they were yesterday.
The tip of one small leaf is all that remains green on this plant.
This deer that sprinted into the meadow senses us.
In the fallen leaves, a large stump lays, struck by lightning, quiet and still.
As if the muscular wind tore off the leaves, the poor tree looks rippled.
Trees stand very still because that is what trees do sometimes.
This year’s class is writing sentences at this time. I’d be honored, and so would the young authors, if we could present them here and receive your comments. If this thread is not an avenue for this pursuit, my apologies in advance.
John, the sentences lend themselves to creating a class poem! Such beautiful, strong images. Of course, each sentence could also grow into an individual poem. I am experiencing my first fall in many years here in a new state, and your class has captured the experience really well. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteFINGERNAILS ON TREES
ReplyDeleteFingernails on trees
drop
down
without a sound.
(c) Charles Waters 2011 all rights reserved.