DaRK PaRTY ReVIEW

Sunday, November 02, 2008

Autumn Wind at Twilight

I was drinking a beer and leaning on my fence. On the grill behind me were four sizzling Italian sausages, the wind whipping the smoke, but unable to push away the smell. The wind picked up and started to sway the boughs of my neighbor's Norway maple tree. The branches danced and the sound of the wind through the leaves was so incredibly intoxicating -- like rain.

For me, with the street light glowing beneath it, the tree captured the essence of autumn in New England.

Labels: Autumn, Video

StumbleUpon |

Digg |

del.icio.us |

Reddit |

Technorati | E-mail a Link

E-mail

Posted by GFS3 at 7:53 AM.

0 comments

Friday, October 03, 2008

The Fade

Summer ended with a minor crash today, like a wine glass that has fallen to a tile floor. The slivers of glass scattering like bits of ice. I woke early and felt the cold from beneath the comforter.

It was still dark; and as I padded to the first floor, I could feel the early morning chill seeping through the walls. I was shivering and, despite my reluctance, I turned on the heat.

The radiators burbled, coughed, and just like that summer slipped away.

The leaves are mostly green, but they’re tired. Some of their neighbors have begun to die (dye?). It’s faint, but there are speckles of red, yellow, and orange. The splash will soon come. The color will explode. Autumn – quick, furious, beautiful autumn – will seize the day.

And then the descent begins – the fade into winter. Fall is my favorite season. So ephemeral; like the pleasure of eating a freshly pick apple or the intoxicating vision of a mound of pumpkins. It's the season of poetry.

So why talk about autumn when you can experience it:

After Apple-Picking

By Robert Frost

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.

And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep

When A Poem is a Wheelbarrow

Mystical, Melancholy Autumn

The Rage of Autumn

Labels: After Apple-Picking, Autumn, Poem, Poetry, Robert Frost

StumbleUpon |

Digg |

del.icio.us |

Reddit |

Technorati | E-mail a Link

E-mail

Posted by GFS3 at 4:34 PM.

0 comments

Saturday, November 03, 2007

Mystical, Melancholy Autumn

A fire crackles in the hearth of my fireplace on this chilly, November Saturday. The thick gray clouds occlude the weak autumn sun casting a dull pall on the morning. A slight, but cold northern breeze sways the boughs of the maple trees in my front yard. The leaves are only just beginning to rust and pale. Only a light coating of the fallen lay scattered across my still green lawn.

Like a house guest delayed at the train station (and carrying too much baggage), autumn is late this year. Summer extended its reach all the way through October – holding the door closed. My children and I rang neighbors’ doorbells and gleefully shouted “Trick or treat!” without the need of jackets.

But summer is gone now. The warmth no longer lingers. Stern and pensive autumn has arrived. She will be brief this year; staying no longer than a month before winter stalks in and settles in for a long stay.

But I’ll enjoy autumn while she’s here. She has always been my favorite season. She’s a comfortable time – a time for chopping wood, raking leaves, and putting up storm windows. The frivolity of summer has been put away with my shorts and t-shirts. Out come my sweaters and jackets. Out comes my brain.

Autumn slows us enough to allow for contemplation. As the trees begin to shed and the leaves die a colorful death – what better time to think of your own mortality? What better time to reflect on family? Autumn has that wonderful grounding quality to remind us that we just temporary travelers in this world.

Autumn is a time for poetry. One of my favorite poems about this season is by William Cullen Bryant, who fell into the winter of his own life in 1878. Bryant (despite being a lawyer) has a gentle side and you can feel the power of his melancholy musings in his beautiful poem “October.” This is a poem that I think captures of essence of autumn.

October

By William Cullen Bryant

AY, thou art welcome, heaven's delicious breath! When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf,
And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief
And the year smiles as it draws near its death. Wind of the sunny south! oh, still delay
In the gay woods and in the golden air,
Like to a good old age released from care,
Journeying, in long serenity, away.
In such a bright, late quiet, would that I
Might wear out life like thee, 'mid bowers and brooks
And dearer yet, the sunshine of kind looks,
And music of kind voices ever nigh;
And when my last sand twinkled in the glass,
Pass silently from men, as thou dost pass.

Read our musings about William Carlos Williams and Red Wheelbarrows here

Labels: Autumn, Poetry, William Cullen Bryant

StumbleUpon |

Digg |

del.icio.us |

Reddit |

Technorati | E-mail a Link

E-mail

Posted by GFS3 at 11:06 AM.

0 comments

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

The Rage of Autumn

In the fading light of the late afternoon, I paused among the crinkled, honey-colored maple leaves scattered on my driveway. Overhead, between the dark boughs of a large tree, the full moon – glistening like a silver fish – dominated the sky. The sight of it – its confidence – its defiance of the day – broke my stride.

There was a hint of ice in the air, enough so your lungs understood that winter was coming – sooner rather than later. The sky was a cloudless tapestry of blue, a rarity in New England during November when the sky usually looks like a dirty pie plate.

Autumn is the season for reflection. When time seems to slow down and the activities of summer are put away like tools in an old shed. It is a strange season – one of death and decay combined with brilliant colors and striking beauty. It is as if the trees collectively decide to give us a last gasp of merriment before falling dormant until the spring.

No other season makes you reflect so much on your own mortality. I found myself frozen to the driveway – gazing at the bold moon – thinking about my grandfather who died when I was a baby. His wedding ring now adorns my own ring finger and I gazed down on it as I’m apt to do when thinking about him.

That brought on thoughts of my own father and his battle with prostate cancer. A fight he has been winning; taken on with grim determination and his typical quiet stoicism which he inherited from my grandfather. Neither man was one for complaints – for whining. My father is a big, tough man, but tender to those he loves, especially to his grandchildren (whom he adores like a big old bear).

I realize that my father remains my safety net. If I fall, if I fail, even as I slide into middle age, he will be there to catch me. I can rely on his guidance, his sometimes gruff instructions on how I need to weatherproof the windows or how best to winterize the flower garden. He doesn’t advise, my father, he tells. At times, I feel my temper rise or the heat in my cheeks, but mostly I know he is right. This, I’ve come to understand, is how my father tells me he cares.

I like knowing that my father stands behind me – his big mitt of a hand on my shoulder. I like that he cares about the length of the grass on my lawn and knows the best way to clean out gutters.

I like that he has been strong enough to beat the cancer that tried to take him down. And that’s why I always think of my father when I read Dylan Thomas’s most famous poem; a poem that perfectly reflects a vibrant fall day when the moon decides to capture the day.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Labels: Autumn, death, Dylan Thomas, Poetry

StumbleUpon |

Digg |

del.icio.us |

Reddit |

Technorati | E-mail a Link

E-mail

Posted by GFS3 at 11:40 AM.

0 comments

Dark Twitterings