It happens once each year like – ‘er – clockwork. In the beginning it is beautiful, even enchanting; however, as it trundles along into November, the season can turn mean, even vengeful.
Imagine one dry leaf tumbling down a concrete sidewalk.
See yourself looking out your bedroom window spattered with rain, and the damp coming in.
Feel the hollow at the bottom of the heart as the hours of light diminish, and frost on brown grass blades replaces shimmering morning dew.
Recall that the seasons follow the planet’s circuit around our star – the wannabe organized man invented the concept of time that seems to move forward but leaves us looking back over our shoulders.
I was born on the autumnal equinox. Joe S and I were married on the spring equinox. So, I have a connection to these two annual points on the calendar. You may be interested to know that an equinox does not always have the same date; the day varies. The autumn equinox falls on either September 22nd or 23rd. My mother picked the 23rd for me, and as I grew to understand birthdays, she insisted I stay on the date she authorized for the sake of – well, I’m not sure what or who.
In contrast, Joe and I enjoy having to look up the date of our anniversary (March 19, 20, or 21 – blame the Gregorians with their calendar) and when we were in the Twin Cities where there are actual restaurants, we celebrated for three days – just in case the astral powers that be got it wrong.
Autumn is the Poets’ season, bringing a certain comfort in its validation of all she knows is true, actual, soul-piercing. The time when the summer of each being’s life starts to wane. Nothing is permanent. What arises, departs. Yet, the departure is glorious, rich with the palette of living’s colors. Tall, red prairie grass lets the wind have its way like aging bones struggling to keep and elder’s body upright. The evening wind and darkness coming ever earlier often put us in nostalgic moods. Pumpkins’ gap-toothed leering – the symbolic lifeless head staring straight into every creature’s eyes.
The Poets’ season is a time of melancholy, even if one doesn’t believe in such invisible forces. The waning light, cold moons – even blue—fear of the wolves’ howling gone with the packs – gone – gone – left to the Poets’ songs.
There’s a good reason why “autumn” is also called “fall.” In contrast to the rising heat of summer, the season has the essence of a steady decline into a damp crypt; yet, paradoxically, as weeks fall off the calendar, the coziness of a house heated by fossil fuels can feel downright decadent after a bracing walk with the dog(s). Even the time change from “daylight savings” to “standard,” has the old memory-sentence, “spring ahead; fall back.” That “fall” can be brilliant with reds and golds, but always swiftly turns to gray scud meddling with the skies and snow-rain muddying earth.
Autumn often causes fretting. Will I get sick again this winter, as I did last year? How can I get through driving again in ice and heavy snow? Can I manage depression as the light goes away? When the kids go back to school, will I worry about them? And so on. That’s just the way it is. Autumn can bring out the rock-bottom desolation in the pit of our discontent.
We Minnesotans, on the other hand, are a hardy bunch, however, and most of us look at autumn as a time for football, hunting, and beer – well, roughly half of us, anyway. Similarly, Minnesotans see Fall as a time of waiting. For what? Winter, of course! Winter! It makes us who we are! (I heard that somewhere after I moved back to Minnesota after ten years in San Diego, California where to my amazement there was only one season called “really nice all the time.”
I begin with my poetic offering at the altar of the season. Please pour yourself a hot (hard?) cider, stir with a cinnamon stick, put on some bittersweet, new-age music, and read on, but of course, don’t expect a blaze of colors – maybe a pumpkin gargoyle.
Poets in Autumn
by CatherineStenzel
The Forest weeps needles cooling earth
Shriveled rust-red rosehips bend bows on slenders
Warm wafts of air return to whisper-tease, “Spring”
on Hallowed Eve
Then soldier winds blow cold ghosts wishless writhing
from the still pond’s thin and lacquered
veils of ice
On water’s edge, enduring pampas grasses
wave their hair like sacred dancers
Old Badger holed up long in tooth and longer nails
Yearling Bear Cub slumps toward winter-coming cave
No more signature howls under shifting boreal light
Rabbits grow fat turning gray to white
Dusky deepening shadows herd us all to winter nights
closing quickly and long-sleep coming
It is just so
Poets’ suck in breath and swallow voice
Searching without finding and Spring
not coming into words
Bramble thickets of sentences catch at knees and trip
The ungrateful sound of brittle leaves shouts at escaped rhymes
The muses have all flown south
to bask relaxing in warmer climes
Beware the edges of words both fore and aft
They are sharp and hazardous to the craft
Dirges and requiems sing in black-killed cadences
while Churchill’s Black Dog
sits breathing heavy on our chests
tongue pulled back from jaws dangerous
Greying sheets fall lower creeping down
toward faint horizons of our gravestone crowns
It is just so
coming on and closing fast
pushing all efforts toward the void at last
Now, on to the poets whose names people actually know.
One of the more famous autumn poems was written by John Keats (1795 – 1821) in 1819. Although personal problems left him little time to devote to poetry in 1819, he composed "To Autumn" after a walk one autumnal evening. The work marks the end of his poetic career, as he needed to earn money and could no longer devote himself to the lifestyle of a poet. A little over a year after the publication (1920) of "To Autumn", Keats died.
The work has been interpreted as a meditation on death. One of the most anthologized English lyric poems. "To Autumn" has been regarded by critics as one of the most perfect short poems in the English language.
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
And here’s one from a favorite of two of the Almanac’s writers.
By Rainer Maria Rilke
After the summer's yield, Lord, it is time
to let your shadow lengthen on the sundials
and in the pastures let the rough winds fly.
As for the final fruits, coax them to roundness.
Direct on them two days of warmer light
to hale them golden toward their term, and harry
the last few drops of sweetness through the wine.
Whoever's homeless now, will build no shelter;
who lives alone will live indefinitely so,
waking up to read a little, draft long letters,
and, along the city's avenues,
fitfully wander when the wild leaves loosen.
Continuing with our poetic, Japanese friends, comes the typical minimalist approach – the grain of sand and the world.
I pull out the gray hairs,
And under my pillow,
There is a cricket.
In this autumn,
Why I get older?
The clouds and birds.
Changed the red color,
Fallen on the tofu,
The leaf of the light crimson maple.
Autumn
By Amy Lowell
All day I have watched the purple vine leaves
Fall into the water.
And now in the moonlight they still fall,
But each leaf is fringed with silver.
Last, we offer a “transitional” poem, one that stands on tiptoes at the edge of autumn and peers into the blizzard, whiteout of winter.
John Haines
We climbed out of the timber,
bending on the steep meadow
to look for berries
then still in the reddening sunlight
went on up the windy shoulder.
A shadow followed us up the mountain
like a black moon rising.
Minute by minute the autumn lamps
on the slope burned out.
Around us the air and the rocks
whispered of night . . .
A great cloud blew from the north,
and the mountain vanished
in the rain and stormlit darkness.
Background – Factual Information (just a bit):
There are two moments in the year when the Sun is exactly (almost) above the Equator and day and night are of equal length; also, either of the two points in the sky where the ecliptic (the Sun's annual pathway) and the celestial equator intersect.
The word autumn is derived from Latin autumnus, archaic auctumnus, possibly from the ancient Etruscan root autu- and has within it connotations of the passing of the year. More ancient roots mean “cold” and “dry.”
After the Greek era, the word continued to be used as the Old French word autompne (automne in modern French) or autumpne in Middle English,[17] and was later normalised to the original Latin. In the Medieval period, there are rare examples of its use as early as the 12th century, but by the 16th century, it was in common use.
The alternative word fall for the season traces its origins to old Germanic languages. The exact derivation is unclear, with the Old English fiæll or feallan and the Old Norse fall all being possible candidates. However, these words all have the meaning "to fall from a height" and are clearly derived either from a common root or from each other. The term came to denote the season in 16th-century England, a contraction of Middle English expressions like "fall of the leaf" and "fall of the year".
Not Entirely Equal Day & Night
On the two equinoxes every year the Sun shines directly (almost) on the Equator and the length of day and night is nearly equal – but not exactly.
Melancholia: Skies turn grey, the amount of usable daylight drops rapidly, and many people turn inward, both physically and mentally. It has been referred to as an unhealthy season. Deep sadness or gloom. A mental condition characterized by persistent depression and ill-founded fears.
Exploration #1: What things and emotions do you associate with autumn?
Exploration #2: For you, how much does the thought of winter intrude on the waning beauty of autumn?
Exploration #3: Do you agree that autumn is the season of poets?
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