[She] says Remember, you’re writing these poems for god.
I’m about to ask her what type of poems god likes
when the wind picks up, sending a flood of small, round leaves down the street. Got it, I say.
— Chessy Normile, from “There Was a Forest of Pines I Loved for Years,” The American Poetry Review (vo. 49, no. 6, November/December 2020)
Notes: Poem Source – Memory’s Landscape. Photo: DK, Cove Island Park, Nov 12, 2020, 6:45 a.m.
Later I went inside, out of the nostalgic sad autumnal smell of leaf smoke, and talked a few minutes to the girl propped in bed with her hair in pigtails. Despite the nausea, her eyes were extraordinarily bright. I thought she looked at me with the soft intensity, the tenderness, that I had seen in the eyes of too many people dying of cancer-the look that says how lovely are the shapes and colors of life and how dear the faces of friends, how desirable it all is, how soon to be lost.
― Wallace Stegner, All the Little Live Things (Penguin Books, December 1, 1991, first published 1967)
Notes:
The leaves are turning,
one by one carried away in the crisp wind […]
Away, away, says the blue and gold day,
and no one hears it but the wind…
Sit here —…
This is heaven.
Sit. Stay.
Notes:
Got up on a cool morning. Leaned out a window.
No cloud, no wind. Air that flowers held
for awhile. Some dove somewhere …
Let the bucket of memory down into the well,
bring it up. Cool, cool minutes. No one
stirring, no plans. Just being there.
This is what the whole thing is about.
– William Stafford, from “Just Thinking” in Ask Me: 100 Essential Poems of William Stafford
Notes: Poem – Thank you Whiskey River. Photo Credit: Strandgut and Kulturmuscheln. Related Posts: William Stafford.
Fallen leaves
fall on each other—
rain beats on the rain.
~ Kyōtai, from Haiku: An Anthology of Japanese Poems
Notes: Haiku via soracities. Photo: Rain and Coffee
Smoke: tobacco burning, coal smoke, wood-fire smoke, leaf smoke. Most of all, leaf smoke. This is the only odor I can will back to consciousness just by thinking about it. I can sit in a chair, thinking, and call up clearly to mind the smell of burning autumn leaves, coded and stored away somewhere in a temporal lobe, firing off explosive signals into every part of my right hemisphere. But nothing else: if I try to recall the thick smell of Edinburgh in winter, or the accidental burning of a plastic comb, or a rose, or a glass of wine, I cannot do this; I can get a clear picture of any face I feel like remembering, and I can hear whatever Beethoven quartet I want to recall, but except for the leaf bonfire I cannot really remember a smell in its absence. To be sure, I know the odor of cinnamon or juniper and can name such things with accuracy when they turn up in front of my nose, but I cannot imagine them into existence.
~ Lewis Thomas, A Long Line of Cells: Collected Essays
Notes:
The woods is shining this morning.
Red, gold and green, the leaves
lie on the ground, or fall,
or hang full of light in the air still…
Perfect in its rise and in its fall, it takes
the place it has been coming to forever.
It has not hastened here, or lagged…
See how without confusion it is
all that it is, and how flawless
its grace is. Running or walking,
the way is the same. Be still. Be still.
“He moves your bones, and the way is clear.”
~ Wendell Berry, from “Grace. For Gurney Norman, quoting him” from New Collected Poems
Notes:
Everything about autumn is perfect to me. Wooly jumpers, Wellington boots, scarves, thin first, then thick, socks. The low slanting light, the crisp mornings, the chill in my fingers, those last warm sunny days before the rain and the wind. Her moody hues and subdued palate punctuated every now and again by a brilliant orange, scarlet or copper goodbye. She is my true love.
— Alys Fowler, from A Recipe for Rowan Jelly in Toast Magazine
Notes: Quote: Liquid Light and Running Trees. Photo: Comfortably Awkward
…
Let the eye enlarge
with all it beholds.
I want to celebrate color,
how one red leaf flickers
like a match held to a dry branch,
and the whole world goes up
in orange and gold.
~ Linda Pastan, from “Autumn” in Carnival Evening, New & Selected Poems 1968-1998
Notes: Poem Source: Thank you Beth @ Alive on All Channels. Photo: via The Sensual Starfish
— (noun) As one of the most beautiful words in the English language, susurrusis defined as a soft, murmuring sound. It resembles the rustling symphony of the fallen leaves moving across the pavement or the whispers created by the branches of the trees on a windy, autumn day. Uttering susurrus also simulates the acoustics of nature’s effect; this is one of those rare words where its aesthetic, sound and feel coincide beautifully.
Credits: Photograph: Béatrice Lechtanski via Art Propelled. Quote: Thank you Rudy @ Et in Arcadia Ego*
Each of these leaves had just one chance to feather the air with an arabesque of yellow or red, backlit and buoyant, just one chance to be held on the palm of the year, then briskly brushed away like an instant. Maybe two hundred leaves lie piled together under this empty maple, their jumpsuits weighing them down with color, the wind knocked out of them. Quickly it passed, but how well they did it, falling like that, just simply falling.
~ Ted Kooser, October. The Wheeling Year: A Poet’s Field Book
Photograph: Scott Masterton (Gosford Ho, Scotland, United Kingdom)
I am losing precious days.
I am degenerating into a machine for making money.
I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men.
I must break away
and get out into the mountains
to learn the news.
~ John Muir (1838-1914)
Credits: Image – youreyesblazeout. Quote: Explore-Everywhere
6:15 am.
I peek at the weather app before I step outside.
“34° F. Feels like 26° F. Partly Cloudy.”
Winter closing in.
I yank my Tuque over my ears.
I glance at the mirror.
The Black Avenger: Back for an encore.
Black Tuque. Black jacket. Black pants.
And Red Shoes.
Gangster.
I cue up my David Gray playlist.
Open the door.
And head to the street.
How often does it happen?
Just the right song cycles up.
65 David Gray songs resting.
Waiting for their turn.
And it pops up.
A bubbling geyser.
It starts slowly.
Starting from way down deep.
And surging upward.
No chemical inducements.
Adrenaline.
Miracle drug.
↓ click for audio (David Gray: “Everytime”)
Down from the doorway
And into the street
I hear the morning bell
Over and over the pattern repeat
I hear the morning bell
And all the faces cold as stone
In the January chill…
~ David Gray, Everytime [Read more…]
“It is only her in large portions of Canada that wondrous second wind, the Indian summer, attains its amplitude and heavenly perfection, — the temperatures; the sunny haze; the mellow, rich delicate, almost flavoured air: Enough to live — enough to merely be.”
Walt Whitman, Diary in Canada
Image Credit: The Laurentians in Quebec by Chicago Tribune. Quote: Thank you Perpetua.
If the sun were a tree
Its leaves would be this shining color
And they would drop
Over the toes of my boots
Ankle deep.
When I step
There would be the sound
Of light breaking.
— Tom Hennen
Credits: Poem via A Poet Reflects from Hennen’s closing lines to “Wild Aspen Leaves, October,” in Darkness Sticks to Evertything: Collected and New Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2013); Image: Your Eyes Blaze Out via Elinka (Maple Leaf In Autumn Night)
Related Tom Hennen posts:
“As busy as the world gets, there are still times when things move a little slower. When life is a little simpler. When the local color looks good enough to eat. Welcome to Harvest Time. When Mother Nature puts on a whole new wardrobe. And we look at life in a whole new way. So pull out that favorite sweater and grab yourself a little piece, of Pure Michigan.”
Wonderful 30 second clip that captures the feeling and beauty of autumn.
Good Sunday Morning.
Live & Learn 