Autumnal Poetry - An Anthology

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The Poetry of Autumn ~ An Anthology ~ 1

description

A collection of modern and traditional poetry to celebrate Autumn

Transcript of Autumnal Poetry - An Anthology

The Poetry

of Autumn

~ An Anthology ~

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Contents

3 As Summer into Autumn slips - Emily Dickinson4 Sonnet of Autumn - Charles Baudelaire5 To Autumn - William Blake6 Autumn Fires - Robert Louis Stevenson7 Autumn in the Garden - Henry Van Dyke8 Autumn Perspective - Erica Jong10 Three Pieces on the Smoke of Autumn - Carl Sandburg11 By an Autumn Fire - Lucy Maud Montgomery12 An Autumn Evening - Lucy Maud Montgomery13 Sonnet 73 - William Shakespeare14 To Autumn - John Keats15 Autumn - John Clare20 The Autumn - Elizabeth Barrett Browning21 Autumn Song - Dante Gabriel Rossetti22 The Wild Swans at Coole - William Butler Yeats23 Nothing Gold can Stay - Robert Frost24 Welcome Back, 1964 - Jesse Glass26 Autumn - Mary Hamrick27 Autumn Colors in the Far North - Ruth Hill28 Autumn Offering - Judith A. Lawrence29 October’s Opal - Robert Savino30 Sweater Weather - Lisa Shields31 Geese - Michael Shorb32 Florida Mabon - Patricia Boutilier

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As Summer into Autumn slips by Emily Dickinson As Summer into Autumn slipsAnd yet we sooner say"The Summer" than "the Autumn," lestWe turn the sun away,

And almost count it an AffrontThe presence to concedeOf one however lovely, notThe one that we have loved --

So we evade the charge of YearsOn one attempting shyThe Circumvention of the ShaftOf Life's Declivity.

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SONNET OF AUTUMN by Charles Baudelaire

THEY say to me, thy clear and crystal eyes: "Why dost thou love me so, strange lover mine?" Be sweet, be still! My heart and soul despise All save that antique brute-like faith of thine;

And will not bare the secret of their shame To thee whose hand soothes me to slumbers long, Nor their black legend write for thee in flame! Passion I hate, a spirit does me wrong.

Let us love gently. Love, from his retreat, Ambushed and shadowy, bends his fatal bow, And I too well his ancient arrows know:

Crime, horror, folly. O pale marguerite, Thou art as I, a bright sun fallen low, O my so white, my so cold Marguerite.

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To Autumnby William Blake

O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stain'dWith the blood of the grape, pass not, but sitBeneath my shady roof; there thou may'st rest,And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe,And all the daughters of the year shall dance!Sing now the lusty song of fruits and flowers.

'The narrow bud opens her beauties toThe sun, and love runs in her thrilling veins;Blossoms hang round the brows of Morning, andFlourish down the bright cheek of modest Eve,Till clust'ring Summer breaks forth into singing,And feather'd clouds strew flowers round her head.

'The spirits of the air live in the smellsOf fruit; and Joy, with pinions light, roves roundThe gardens, or sits singing in the trees.'Thus sang the jolly Autumn as he sat,Then rose, girded himself, and o'er the bleakHills fled from our sight; but left his golden load.

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Autumn Fires Robert Louis Stevenson

In the other gardensAnd all up the vale,From the autumn bonfiresSee the smoke trail!

Pleasant summer overAnd all the summer flowers,The red fire blazes,The gray smoke towers.

Sing a song of seasons!Something bright in all!Flowers in the summer,Fires in the fall!

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Autumn in the Garden by Henry Van Dyke

When the frosty kiss of Autumn in the darkMakes its markOn the flowers, and the misty morning grievesOver fallen leaves;Then my olden garden, where the golden soilThrough the toilOf a hundred years is mellow, rich, and deep,Whispers in its sleep.

'Mid the crumpled beds of marigold and phlox,Where the boxBorders with its glossy green the ancient walks,There's a voice that talksOf the human hopes that bloomed and withered hereYear by year,--Dreams of joy, that brightened all the labouring hours,Fading as the flowers.

Yet the whispered story does not deepen grief;But reliefFor the loneliness of sorrow seems to flowFrom the Long-Ago,When I think of other lives that learned, like mine,To resign,And remember that the sadness of the fallComes alike to all.

What regrets, what longings for the lost were theirs!And what prayersFor the silent strength that nerves us to endureThings we cannot cure!Pacing up and down the garden where they paced,I have tracedAll their well-worn paths of patience, till I findComfort in my mind.

Faint and far away their ancient griefs appear:Yet how nearIs the tender voice, the careworn, kindly face,Of the human race!Let us walk together in the garden, dearest heart,Not apart!They who know the sorrows other lives have knownNever walk alone.

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Autumn Perspectiveby Erica Jong

Now, moving in, cartons on the floor,the radio playing to bare walls,picture hooks left strandedin the unsoiled squares where paintings were,and something reminding usthis is like all other moving days;finding the dirty ends of someone else's life,hair fallen in the sink, a peach pit,and burned-out matches in the corner;things not preserved, yet never swept awaylike fragments of disturbing dreamswe stumble on all day. . .in ordering our lives, we will discard them,scrub clean the floorboards of this our homelest refuse from the lives we did not leadbecome, in some strange, frightening way, our own.And we have plans that will not tolerateour fears-- a year laid out like roomsin a new house--the dusty wine glassesrinsed off, the vases filled, and bookshelvessagging with heavy winter books.Seeing the room always as it will be,we are content to dust and wait.We will return here from the dark and silentstreets, arms full of books and food,anxious as we always are in winter,and looking for the Good Life we have made.

I see myself then: tense, solemn,in high-heeled shoes that pinch,not basking in the light of goals fulfilled,but looking back to now and seeinga lazy, sunburned, sandaled girlin a bare room, full of promiseand feeling envious.

Now we plan, postponing, pushing our lives forwardinto the future--as if, when the roomcontains us and all our treasured junkwe will have filled whatever gap it isthat makes us wander, discontentedfrom ourselves.

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The room will not change:a rug, or armchair, or new coat of paintwon't make much difference;our eyes are ficklebut we remain the same beneath our suntans,pale, frightened,dreaming ourselves backward and forward in time,dreaming our dreaming selves.

I look forward and see myself looking back.

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Three Pieces on the Smoke of Autumn by Carl Sandburg SMOKE of autumn is on it all.The streamers loosen and travel.The red west is stopped with a gray haze.They fill the ash trees, they wrap the oaks,They make a long-tailed riderIn the pocket of the first, the earliest evening star.. . .Three muskrats swim west on the Desplaines River.

There is a sheet of red ember glow on the river; it is dusk; and the muskrats one by one go on patrol routes west.

Around each slippery padding rat, a fan of ripples; in the silence of dusk a faint wash of ripples, the padding of the rats going west, in a dark and shivering river gold.

(A newspaper in my pocket says the Germans pierce the Italian line; I have letters from poets and sculptors in Greenwich Village; I have letters from an ambulance man in France and an I. W. W. man in Vladivostok.)

I lean on an ash and watch the lights fall, the red ember glow, and three muskrats swim west in a fan of ripples on a sheet of river gold.. . .Better the blue silence and the gray west,The autumn mist on the river,And not any hate and not any love,And not anything at all of the keen and the deep:Only the peace of a dog head on a barn floor,And the new corn shoveled in bushelsAnd the pumpkins brought from the corn rows,Umber lights of the dark,Umber lanterns of the loam dark.

Here a dog head dreams.Not any hate, not any love.Not anything but dreams.Brother of dusk and umber.

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By an Autumn Fire by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Now at our casement the wind is shrilling, Poignant and keen And all the great boughs of the pines between It is harping a lone and hungering strain To the eldritch weeping of the rain; And then to the wild, wet valley flying It is seeking, sighing, Something lost in the summer olden. When night was silver and day was golden; But out on the shore the waves are moaning With ancient and never fulfilled desire, And the spirits of all the empty spaces, Of all the dark and haunted places, With the rain and the wind on their death-white faces, Come to the lure of our leaping fire.

But we bar them out with this rose-red splendor From our blithe domain, And drown the whimper of wind and rain With undaunted laughter, echoing long, Cheery old tale and gay old song; Ours is the joyance of ripe fruition, Attained ambition. Ours is the treasure of tested loving, Friendship that needs no further proving;

No more of springtime hopes, sweet and uncertain,Here we have largess of summer in feePile high the logs till the flame be leaping,At bay the chill of the autumn keeping,While pilgrim-wise, we may go a-reapingIn the fairest meadow of memory!

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An Autumn Evening by Lucy Maud Montgomery Dark hills against a hollow crocus skyScarfed with its crimson pennons, and below The dome of sunset long, hushed valleys lieCradling the twilight, where the lone winds blow And wake among the harps of leafless trees Fantastic runes and mournful melodies.

The chilly purple air is threaded throughWith silver from the rising moon afar, And from a gulf of clear, unfathomed blueIn the southwest glimmers a great gold star Above the darkening druid glens of fir Where beckoning boughs and elfin voices stir.

And so I wander through the shadows still,And look and listen with a rapt delight, Pausing again and yet again at willTo drink the elusive beauty of the night, Until my soul is filled, as some deep cup, That with divine enchantment is brimmed up.

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Sonnet 73 by William Shakespeare (1609)

That time of year thou mayst in me beholdWhen yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hangUpon those boughs which shake against the cold,Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.In me thou see’st the twilight of such dayAs after sunset fadeth in the west;Which by and by black night doth take away,Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,As the deathbed whereon it must expire,Consumed with that which it was nourished by.This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

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To Autumn John Keats (1820)

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;Conspiring with him how to load and blessWith 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 shellsWith 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 findThee 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 hookSpares the next swath and all its twined flowers:And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keepSteady 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 mournAmong the river sallows, borne aloftOr sinking as the light wind lives or dies;And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble softThe red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

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Autumn John Clare (1821)

The summer-flower has run to seed,And yellow is the woodland bough;And every leaf of bush and weedIs tipt with autumn’s pencil now.

And I do love the varied hue,And I do love the browning plain;And I do love each scene to view,That’s mark’d with beauties of her reign.

The woodbine-trees red berries bear,That clustering hang upon the bower;While, fondly lingering here and there,Peeps out a dwindling sickly flower.

The trees’ gay leaves are turned brown,By every little wind undress’d;And as they flap and whistle down,We see the birds’ deserted nest.

No thrush or blackbird meets the eye,Or fills the ear with summer’s strain;They but dart out for worm and fly,Then silent seek their rest again.

Beside the brook, in misty blue,Bilberries glow on tendrils weak,Where many a bare-foot splashes through,The pulpy, juicy prize to seek:

For ’tis the rustic boy’s delight,Now autumn’s sun so warmly gleams,And these ripe berries tempt his sight,To dabble in the shallow streams.

And oft his rambles we may trace,Delv’d in the mud his printing feet,And oft we meet a chubby faceAll stained with the berries sweet.

The cowboy oft slives down the brook,And tracks for hours each winding round,While pinders, that such chances look,Drive his rambling cows to pound.

The woodland bowers, that us’d to beLost in their silence and their shade,

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Are now a scene of rural glee,With many a nutting swain and maid.

The scrambling shepherd with his hook,’Mong hazel boughs of rusty brownThat overhang some gulphing brook,Drags the ripen’d clusters down.

While, on a bank of faded grass,Some artless maid the prize receives;And kisses to the sun-tann’d lass,As well as nuts, the shepherd gives.

I love the year’s decline, and loveThrough rustling yellow shades to range,O’er stubble land, ’neath willow grove,To pause upon each varied change:

And oft have thought ’twas sweet, to listThe stubbles crackling with the heat,Just as the sun broke through the mistAnd warm’d the herdsman’s rushy seat;

And grunting noise of rambling hogs,Where pattering acorns oddly drop;And noisy bark of shepherds’ dogs,The restless routs of sheep to stop;

While distant thresher’s swingle dropsWith sharp and hollow-twanking raps;And, nigh at hand, the echoing chopsOf hardy hedger stopping gaps;

And sportsmen’s trembling whistle-callsThat stay the swift retreating pack;And cowboy’s whoops, and squawking brawls,To urge the straggling heifer back.

Autumn-time, thy scenes and shadesAre pleasing to the tasteful eye;Though winter, when the thought pervades,Creates an ague-shivering sigh.

Grey-bearded rime hangs on the morn,And what’s to come too true declares;The ice-drop hardens on the thorn,And winter’s starving bed prepares.

No music’s heard the fields among;Save where the hedge-chats chittering play,

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And ploughman drawls his lonely song,As cutting short the dreary day.

Now shatter’d shades let me attend,Reflecting look on their decline,Where pattering leaves confess their end,In sighing flutterings hinting mine.

For every leaf, that twirls the breeze,May useful hints and lessons give;The falling leaves and fading treesWill teach and caution us to live.

“Wandering clown,” they seem to say,“In us your coming end review:Like you we lived, but now decay;The same sad fate approaches you.”

Beneath a yellow fading tree,As red suns light thee, Autumn-morn,In wildest rapture let me seeThe sweets that most thy charms adorn.

O while my eye the landscape views,What countless beauties are display’d;What varied tints of nameless hues, —Shades endless melting into shade.

A russet red the hazels gain,As suited to their drear decline;While maples brightest dress retain,And in the gayest yellows shine.

The poplar tree hath lost its pride;Its leaves in wan consumption pine;They hoary turn on either side,And life to every gale resign.

The stubborn oak, with haughty prideStill in its lingering green, we view;But vain the strength he shows is tried,He tinges slow with sickly hue.

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The proudest triumph art conceives,Or beauties nature’s power can crown,Grey-bearded time in shatters leaves;Destruction’s trample treads them down.

Tis lovely now to turn one’s eye,The changing face of heaven to mind;How thin-spun clouds glide swiftly by,While lurking storms slow move behind.

Now suns are clear, now clouds pervade,Each moment chang’d, and chang’d again;And first a light, and then a shade,Swift glooms and brightens o’er the plain.

Poor pussy through the stubble flies,In vain, o’erpowering foes to shun;The lurking spaniel points the prize,And pussy’s harmless race is run.

The crowing pheasant, in the brakes,Betrays his lair with awkward squalls;A certain aim the gunner takes,He clumsy fluskers up, and falls.

But hide thee, muse, the woods among,Nor stain thy artless, rural rhymes;Go leave the murderer’s wiles unsung,Nor mark the harden’d gunner’s crimes.

The fields all clear’d, the labouring miceTo sheltering hedge and wood patrole,Where hips and haws for food suffice,That chumbled lie about their hole.

The squirrel, bobbing from the eye,Is busy now about his hoard,And in old nest of crow or pyeHis winter-store is oft explor’d.

The leaves forsake the willow grey,And down the brook they whirl and wind;So hopes and pleasures whirl away,And leave old age and pain behind.

The thorns and briars, vermilion-hue,Now full of hips and haws are seen;If village-prophecies be true,They prove that winter will be keen.

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Hark! started are some lonely strains:The robin-bird is urg’d to sing;Of chilly evening he complains,And dithering droops his ruffled wing.

Slow o’er the wood the puddock sails;And mournful, as the storms arise,His feeble note of sorrow wailsTo the unpitying frowning skies.

More coldly blows the autumn-breeze;Old winter grins a blast between;The north-winds rise and strip the trees,And desolation shuts the scene.

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The Autumn Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1833) Go, sit upon the lofty hill,And turn your eyes around,Where waving woods and waters wildDo hymn an autumn sound.The summer sun is faint on them —The summer flowers depart —Sit still — as all transform’d to stone,Except your musing heart.

How there you sat in summer-time,May yet be in your mind;And how you heard the green woods singBeneath the freshening wind.Though the same wind now blows around,You would its blast recall;For every breath that stirs the trees,Doth cause a leaf to fall.

Oh! like that wind, is all the mirthThat flesh and dust impart:We cannot bear its visitings,When change is on the heart.Gay words and jests may make us smile,When Sorrow is asleep;But other things must make us smile,When Sorrow bids us weep!

The dearest hands that clasp our hands, —Their presence may be o’er;The dearest voice that meets our ear,That tone may come no more!Youth fades; and then, the joys of youth,Which once refresh’d our mind,Shall come — as, on those sighing woods,The chilling autumn wind.

Hear not the wind — view not the woods;Look out o’er vale and hill —In spring, the sky encircled them —The sky is round them still.Come autumn’s scathe — come winter’s cold —Come change — and human fate!Whatever prospect Heaven doth bound,Can ne’er be desolate.

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Autumn Song Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1883) Know’st thou not at the fall of the leafHow the heart feels a languid griefLaid on it for a covering,And how sleep seems a goodly thingIn Autumn at the fall of the leaf?

And how the swift beat of the brainFalters because it is in vain,In Autumn at the fall of the leafKnowest thou not? and how the chiefOf joys seems—not to suffer pain?

Know’st thou not at the fall of the leafHow the soul feels like a dried sheafBound up at length for harvesting,And how death seems a comely thingIn Autumn at the fall of the leaf?

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The Wild Swans at Coole William Butler Yeats (1919)

The trees are in their autumn beauty,The woodland paths are dry,Under the October twilight the waterMirrors a still sky;Upon the brimming water among the stonesAre nine-and-fifty swans.

The nineteenth autumn has come upon meSince I first made my count;I saw, before I had well finished,All suddenly mountAnd scatter wheeling in great broken ringsUpon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,And now my heart is sore.All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,The first time on this shore,The bell-beat of their wings above my head,Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,They paddle in the coldCompanionable streams or climb the air;Their hearts have not grown old;Passion or conquest, wander where they will,Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water,Mysterious, beautiful;Among what rushes will they build,By what lake’s edge or poolDelight men’s eyes when I awake some dayTo find they have flown away?

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Nothing Gold Can Stay Robert Frost (1923)

Nature’s first green is gold,Her hardest hue to hold.Her early leaf’s a flower;But only so an hour.Then leaf subsides to leaf.So Eden sank to grief,So dawn goes down to day.Nothing gold can stay.

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Welcome Back, 1964 by Jesse Glass

Barn burnt.Sheep with it.Smell ofroasted mutton.Ribs of a work horsestark above cindersscorched legsin sideways galloprunning from its fat & leatherinto bone & stone & dirt.We stoodin pre-dawnautumn.Trooper with hispad said“Arson mebbe—”Fire truck'scleated tracks;mud & watersoaked across the lawn.Houndsescapedfrom thekiller-wicknowlolled,licking singed toes.

Heat-split oaks'tick & fracture;moon-brightsmoke-skeinfading over puddles—& bludgeonedapart barn boardshungbluely aglow. Dim slithers of orangebit cuticles ofcinder. (Heard hiddenburnt-thru matter surge &tumble.) Fatherwith his forehead in one handleaned against a fence poststalledbetween the mightystations of his breath—

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Icoughing,poked a sheep skullwith a stick: charredjawsblack in flexure,tongue like a lodestoneprickly with silence.

Mother sighed &left us, climbed the hillto the propped-on-blocks-&-timber house,baby brotherwrithing free of his blanketin her arms. I saw herbend & straightenframed by kitchen window light.Mouth moving mournfullyin silence, shebrought light to each dark room.I turned my stinging eyes away& almost drowsed...“Look out!“Look out!”—last walltipped & fell.—Dad shouted“Go get the cellar buckets!”& we threwwater on fogtill dawngave us moredimensionsto our grief.

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Autumn by Mary Hamrick

Autumn is like an old book:Marred spines turn mean yellow,staples rust red-orange.

Every stained page is stressedby a splat of color. Rough-red,like an old tavern,

we become hungry birdsand prepare for fall.Shape and shadow are candied citron

as lanterns turn bitter yellow. Autumnis a red fox, a goblet filled with dark wine,a hot chilli pepper with smoky eyes.

Pressed leaves take in the colorsof seafood paella and saffron; these leavesare like death, climaxing with a smile.

Autumn: Her dress is a net of mussels;dark shelled, it covers upsummer’s weatherbeaten body.

So pull out your bootsand stand on an aged, wood floorlike an evergreen.

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Autumn Colors in the Far North by Ruth Hill

Flesh, flesh flashes.Very, very cranberry.Straw-colored grasses,and red-twigged osier.Dark brown cattails:arsenic and old lace.Red wine Amaranth,ancient Queen Anne’s Lace.Pine green.Spruce green.Fir green.Gold feather-grasses die’gainst a pink-streaked sky.Willows hold yellow-gold leaves;orange Caragana heavessilver slivers ofblanching branchesinto the slate grey sky.Flurries of falling leavesleave flurries of snow...good-bye!Brown creek clearly dancesover grayling and mica flecks.Blue snow shelf advancesunder hoar-frost diamond specks.Mother moose, big as bison,introduces, “This is my son.”Black back, chocolate side,grey limed limbs, hide.Calf’s calves flailing splayed hooves,windmills clatter slippery grooves,between opposing, racing cars.Wild look, over the shoulder.Wild leap, over the shoulder.It takes a long time to stop running.Warm pink mother-tongue waits in welcome.Motorist missed.Baby is kissed.Autumn colors in the far north,driving by,blissed.

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Autumn Offering by Judith A. Lawrence

I shall be Autumnthis Halloween,with leaf draped skirt,and folds ofboysenberry velvet wineflowing to the ground.

Brown stained face,eyes rimmed in gold,nails dripping sunset,a crown of twigsto cover my head.

You may gather from methe spring of my youth,my summer of maturity,and hold onto with me,the solace of these daysof rememberingbefore the frost.

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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 blisscover spoon-fit bodies,flickering sparks to flames. . .until love of spring gardensbecomes 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 notand your voice with me,through wind’s immutable breath.

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Sweater Weather by Lisa Shields

I was chilly with the November breeze,and it was a courtly thing you diddraping the sweater over my shoulders,taking care to smooth the woolwith a touch that whisperedthat later you would claim the garment,and the shiver taking it would bringwas something you covetedwith breathless avarice.

“Sweater weather,” you said.And I am swept like a crisp oak leafinto a duvet and down dream,where the pillows do not speakof the warm, the moments large and smallwhen I nestle near you,demanding that arms dress meto close kept comfort.

Arms around my waist,legs entwined to akimbo,and my last thought before sweet drowseis that fall will never comewithout you to chase the coldin the season of sweater weather.

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Geese by Michael Shorb

Just north of Valley Fallsrust mustard hue offading autumnchills the marshlast storm ofCanadian geesestuns the flyway

imprinted engines of feathers and cries.

I wonder how they'llthread their wayhow instincts born of spanningnorthern frosts and rawwalnut airnavigate interstatehaze to pinpoints inSouth American distancezeroing back witheach unerring swoopto splashdownon a mountain lakewhere reeds bendmirrored in wateryreflectionsof their own swaying

they and the vanishing geesea single stringstirringneutron dancesiftingbranches of the actualsurrounding me likebreath returningwhen everything elseis gone.

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Floridian Mabon by Patricia Boutilier

Autumn washes in softly along the Gulf of Mexico,a fragile, tonal shift to the quality of light.Well-watered roots spread wider and belie the coming dryness.Gaia realigns Her axial-spinal tilt.

A fragile, tonal shift to the quality of light,days and nights of equal balance process to growing darkness.We remain entrained to the Mother’s yearly cycle.Gaia’s womb splits open in fruitful blessing to us all.

Days and nights of equal balance process to growing darkness,a meditation upon our brief mortality.We dance widdershins the inward spiral, then, deosil, outward go.Gaia’s breath is ceaseless: waxing, waning, peaking, slowing.

A meditation upon our brief mortality,this wisp of seasonal moment of gaining and letting go.Mixed wildflower amber honey spread on fresh-baked whole wheat-bread,an offering to Gaia, nourishes us in Her stead.

This wisp of seasonal moment of gaining and letting go,gathered cones of pine and cypress placed in baskets round the house.Dune sunflower, seaside goldenrod, oxyi daisiesgarland Mother Gaia’s sandy coastal bed.

Gathered cones of pine and cypress placed in baskets round the housesoak in the silvery energy of the full moon’s Harvest glow.A goblet of golden carambola wine,libation poured and drunk at Gaia’s banyan feet.

Soak in the silvery energy of the full moon’s Harvest glow,create, commune, and celebrate the releasing of deep magic.Gaia’s multi-chambered heart beats through eternity,Autumn washes in softly along the Gulf of Mexico.

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