October 15th, 2009

Carl Sandburg’s Autumn Movement

fall_poem

The island is just beginning to flare-out with fall. Trees across the bay from my house, which from a distance appear in wide swaths and fields, have mottled into golden yellow, dark orange, with smatterings of Tibetan royal red. Gosh, I love this time of year in the Northwest. And the attendant melancholy, which, as Joni Mitchell once noted, can be quite comforting. Here’s one of the poems I enjoy dragging out of the back of my head when this time comes around again. Will probably make the year’s first fire in the fireplace tonight, too.

I cried over beautiful things knowing no beautiful thing lasts.

The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper sunburned woman, the mother of the year, the taker of seeds.

The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full of holes, new beautiful things come in the first spit of snow on the northwest wind, and the old things go, not one lasts.

–Carl Sandburg

Opening photo by Jim Cole Franconia, New Hampshire. Thursday, Oct. 1, 2009


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