November

                                                     November First

What I love best in autumn is the way that Nature takes her curtain, as the stage folk say.  The banner of the marshes furl, droop and fall.  The leaves descend in golden glory.  The ripe seeds drop and the fruit is cast aside. And so with slow chords in imperceptible fine modulations the great music draws to a close, and when the silence comes you can scarce distinguish it from the last far-off strains of the woodwinds and the horns.
-- Donald Culross Peattie --
from  Autumn:  A Spiritual Biography of the Season



A poetic description which ends with a musical motif.  My only quibble is that I don't think Nature has dropped the final curtain.  Nature is still around; it's just dropped the curtain for the end of  Act Three.  Act Four will be coming soon, and then, of course, it's not the end of the run.  Nature's Play is a long-running one and, while it may vary, it won't end (until the planet is no more). 





On a bitterly cold November night
The snow fell thick and fast---
First like hard grains of salt,
Then more like soft willow buds.
The flakes settled quietly on the bamboo
And piled up pleasingly on the pine branches.
Rather than turning to old texts, the darkness
Makes me feel like composing my own verse.
                                  -- Ryokan --
from Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf
trans. John Stevens 

Interesting reaction; rejecting the past and turning to the future.   A wish for spring?




November Night

Listen . . .
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd \, break from the trees
And fall.

-- Adelaide Crapsey --
from  Art and Nature:  An Illustrated Anthology of Nature Poetry




I remember those nights growing up in Chicago. 

More Autumn Poems

AUTUMN

Sky full of autumn
earth like crystal
news arrives from a long way off following one wild goose.
The fragrance gone from the ten foot lotus
by the Heavenly Well.
Beech leaves
fall through the night onto the cold river,
fireflies drift by the bamboo fence.
Summer clothes are too thin.
Suddenly the distant flute stops
and I stand a long time waiting.
Where is Paradise
so that I can mount the phoenix and fly there?
          Ngo Chi Lan, Vietnamese, 15th Century
from Art and Nature.




Here's a cheerful view of autumnal themes by Emily Bronte

Fall, Leaves, Fall

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree.
I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night's decay
Ushers in a drearier day.
                 -- Emily Bronte --
from Art and Nature:  An Illustrated Anthology of Nature Poetry

  




OCTOBER 10

Now constantly there is the sound,
quieter than rain,
of the leaves falling.

Under their loosening bright  
gold, the sycamore limbs
bleach whiter.

Now the only flowers
are beeweed and aster, spray
of their white and lavender
over the brown leaves.

The calling of the crow sounds
loud--a landmark--now
that the life of summer falls
silent, and the nights grow.
-- Wendell Berry --
from A Year in Poetry
Thomas E. Foster & Elizabeth C. Guthrie, eds.


  
By the Open Window

     In the calm of the autumn night
     I sit by the open window
     For whole hours in perfect
     Delightful quietness.
     The light rain of leaves falls.
     The sigh of the corruptible world
     Echoes in my corruptible nature.
But it is a sweet sigh, it soars as a prayer.
     My window opens up a world
     Unknown.  A source of ineffable,
     Perfumed memories is offered me;
     Wings beat at my window--
Refreshing autumnal spirits
     Come unto me and encircle me
     And they speak with me in their innocence.
     I feel indistinct, far-reaching hopes
     And in the venerable silence
Of creation, my ears hear melodies,
     They hear crystalline, mystical
     Music from the chorus of the stars.

-- C. F. Cavafy--
from  Art & Nature:  An Illustrated Anthology of Nature Poetry    



 

I hope you find one of these to your liking. 

 

Autumn Poems

Today, September 22,  2016 is the first day of Autumn, or the Autumnal Equinox, or if you prefer, the Fall Equinox.  In recognition of this, here are a few poems about autumn. 



No. 12

The morns are meeker than they were --
The nuts are getting brown --
The berry's cheek is plumper --
The Rose is out of town.

The Maple wears a gayer scarf --
The field a scarlet gown --
Lest I should be old fashioned
I'll put a trinket on.

-- Emily Dickinson --
from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson




With the moon-rising .. .
   Leaf after leaf after leaf
        Falls fluttering down
                     -- Shiki --
from Cherry-Blossoms: Japanese Haiku Series III
tran. not given





     The mountain grows darker,
Taking the scarlet
    From the autumn leaves.
                     -- Buson --
from Silent Flowers
trans R. H. Blyth



Clear autumn sky
   One pine tree
Soaring on the ridge.
               -- Soseki --
from Zen Haiku
Trans and edited by Soiku Shigematsu




Song at the Beginning of Autumn

Now watch this autumn that arrives
In smells.  All looks like summer still;
Colours are quite unchanged, the air
On green and white serenely thrives.
Heavy the trees with growth and full
The fields.  Flowers flourish everywhere.

Proust who collected time within
A child's cake would understand
The ambiguity of this--
Summer still raging while a thin
column of smoke stirs from the land
Proving that autumn gropes for us.

But every season is a kind
Of rich nostalgia.  We give names--
Autumn and summer, winter, spring--
As though to unfasten from the mind
Our moods and give them outward forms.
We want the certain, solid thing

But I am carried back against
My will into a childhood where
Autumn is bonfires, marbles. smoke;
I lean against my window fenced
From evocations in the air.
When I said autumn, autumn broke. 

-- Elizabeth Jennings --
from Collected Poems
  

 When I think of autumn, I do not think of autumn in Tucson, where I've lived for over 45 years.  Instead, I think of autumn in Chicago, where I grew up.