Category Archives: nature

Come again shining glance.

nature, poetry, , , ,

THE LOVE OF OCTOBER

A child looking at ruins grows younger
but cold
and wants to wake to a new name
I have been younger in October
than in all the months of spring
… walnut and may leaves the color
of shoulders at the end of summer
a month that has been to the mountain
and become light there
the long grass lies pointing uphill
even in death for a reason
that none of us knows
and the wren laughs in the early shade now
come again shining glance in your good time
naked air late morning
my love is for lightness
of touch foot feather
the day is yet one more yellow leaf
and without turning I kiss the light
by an old well on the last of the month
gathering wild rose hips
in the sun.

–W.S. Merwin

Anna Althea Hills, Autumn Fallbrook

 

In her silver shoon.

nature, poetry, ,

SILVER

Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon;
This way, and that, she peers, and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees;
One by one the casements catch
Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;
Couched in his kennel, like a log,
With paws of silver sleeps the dog;
From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep
Of doves in a silver-feathered sleep;
A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
With silver claws, and silver eye;
And moveless fish in the water gleam,
By silver reeds in a silver stream.

-Walter de la Mare

Paul Sandby, Moonlight on a River, 1800

 

We still love this September poem.

nature, poetry, , , , , , , , ,

(I’m reposting this from five years ago. Every September, many, many people still find the poem below on my blog. This fall, for the first time, I am pleased to say I have acquired a purple aster to enjoy for the next couple of months, and have installed it by the front door.)

Only a few years ago did I discover this poem. Being short and packed with autumnal images, it is perfect for a busy time of year, when you don’t want to let the equinox pass unnoticed, but you are canning tomatoes or drying figs or just taking all the walks you can in the crisp air. If you don’t pay attention to the calendar or the TV, you might miss the day.

For months and years I’ve been trying off and on to confirm that its author is Edwina Hume Fallis. New things show up on Internet searches all the time, and today I have seen enough sites that are confident about attributing it to her that I will accept it. Two months ago I couldn’t find two postings of the poem where her name was even spelled right. Most places it is shared as by “Anonymous.”

In the city of Denver, Colorado, Edwina Hume Fallis is especially famous, for her teaching and writing, a toy shop she owned, and her book When Denver and I Were Young. (I did recently contact the Denver public library to see if they had a copy of the poem below in their collection about her; they did not.) She and her sister made toys to use as props in telling stories to kindergarten students, and she did write over 100 poems; maybe this one was in an anthology that is now out of print. Many women bloggers seem to have memorized it in elementary school.

I wonder if any of my readers in the Southern Hemisphere knows of a similar poem that applies to the opposite seasons down there?

SEPTEMBER

A road like brown ribbon,
A sky that is blue
A forest of green with that sky peeping through.
Asters deep purple,
A grasshopper’s call –
Today, it is Summer
Tomorrow is Fall!

-Edwina Hume Fallis

At Pippin’s in 2017, waiting for the aspens to turn.

The delicious scent and repose.

nature, quotes,

Early fall rain has told me confidently about the arrival of the season. And there’s nothing so evocative, familiar but startling, as that particular scent that is carried in the droplets, and in the mist rising from the ground. 

“Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love – that makes life and nature harmonise. The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one’s very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air, while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit. Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.”

― George Eliot, George Eliot’s Life, as Related in her Letters and Journals

[Letter to Miss Lewis, Oct. 1, 1841]