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

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I went back to sleep.

Later, in the gray light of morning, I stared out at the first snow of the season. A wet quilt of heavy snow buried the still orange leaves scattered across my back patio; the branches that dropped during a wind storm over the weekend poke up through the snow like thin exclamation points on the weather.

I bundled into my coat, gloves, and hat and trudged into the bitter cold. I pulled a shovel out of my garage and proceeded to dig out of the two inches of frozen gruel.

What a way to start a Monday. I started with the front walk and then the sidewalk. I moved to the backdoor clearing a path to the driveway. Then I put my back into it and the main event.

Rain dribbled from the soupy sky. The morning moved on and I knew I would be late for work. Sweat mixed with the cold rain on my forehead and my muscles in my back and shoulders began to ache.

I felt impatient. Looming in the back of my mind came memories of Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening.” This beautiful, pensive poem is about the dark of winter and how it brings us closer to our own mortality.

I rested and leaned on the handle of my shovel.

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

My mood had changed and I finished my chore.

Carl Sandburg and Poetry and a Roof

Labels: Poetry, Robert Frost, Snow, Winter

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