I love this time of year.  The contrasts – colors, vibrant, but a solid melancholy surrounding them as we all prepare for a hiatus, a hibernation.  So many new things begin: School years, theatre seasons, and yet we’re also planning for an end, because Fall marks the start of the end of the year – we’ll mark one more trip around the sun, and all wonder how it could’ve gone so fast.  But before that, that fabulous smell in the air that says “Only a few more weeks, I’ll be gone!  Gather friends and family, hold them close, enjoy it now.”

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September Midnight, by Sara Teasdale

Lyric night of the lingering Indian Summer,
Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing,
Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects,
Ceaseless, insistent.

The grasshopper’s horn, and far-off, high in the maples,
The wheel of a locust leisurely grinding the silence
Under a moon waning and worn, broken,
Tired with summer.

Let me remember you, voices of little insects,
Weeds in the moonlight, fields that are tangled with asters,
Let me remember, soon will the winter be on us,
Snow-hushed and heavy.

Over my soul murmur your mute benediction,
While I gaze, O fields that rest after harvest,
As those who part look long in the eyes they lean to,
Lest they forget them.

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Autumn’s the mellow time.
-William Allingham

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October’s Opal, by Robert Savino

October is here, once again,
barely transcending the threshold of autumn.
The maple is turning yellow to orange, to red,
soon to be bared by winter.

Ah winter, when blankets of bliss
cover spoon-fit bodies,
flickering sparks to flames. . .
until love of spring gardens
becomes the rapture of summer bloom.

And looking from outside-in,
beyond recognizable beauty,
the ruby of jewels glows bright,
pumping currents of rivers red,
deep into the wells of every extremity.
Our chest fills with laughter.

When apart, even so brief,
this season stays with you,
whether I am or not
and your voice with me,
through wind’s immutable breath.

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I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.

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November Snow, by Joseph Pacheco

The first to fall is the first to go.
Earth wears its mantle damp and chill —
Patina of November snow.

Leaves raged with fire just days ago —
Now grays, ash browns, pale yellows tell
The first to fall are the first to go.

Remains of harvest in desolate row
Brace for the final winter kill
Beneath their shroud of November snow.

The rakes now dry, the plow and hoe
Await Spring’s promise to fulfill —
The first to fall are the first to go.

Lit by the sky’s anemic glow
The pines are standing stiff and still,
Defiant of November snow.

In barns of silence wait those who know
What lies beneath the fields they till —
The first to fall are the first to go,
Together with November snow.

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.
-Albert Camus

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