Autumn Songby Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Know'st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the heart feels a languid grief
Laid on it for a covering,
And how sleep seems a goodly thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?
And how the swift beat of the brain
Falters because it is in vain,
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf
Knowest thou not? and how the chief
Of joys seems—not to suffer pain?
Know'st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the soul feels like a dried sheaf
Bound up at length for harvesting,
And how death seems a comely thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?
You can find this poem on the Poetry Foundation website.
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Ox-Cart Man by Donald Hall
In October of the year,
he counts potatoes dug from the brown field,
counting the seed, counting
the cellar’s portion out,
and bags the rest on the cart’s floor.
He packs wool sheared in April, honey
in combs, linen, leather
tanned from deerhide,
and vinegar in a barrel
hooped by hand at the forge’s fire.
He walks by his ox’s head, ten days
to Portsmouth Market, and sells potatoes,
and the bag that carried potatoes,
flaxseed, birch brooms, maple sugar, goose
feathers, yarn.
When the cart is empty he sells the cart.
When the cart is sold he sells the ox,
harness and yoke, and walks
home, his pockets heavy
with the year’s coin for salt and taxes,
and at home by fire’s light in November cold
stitches new harness
for next year’s ox in the barn,
and carves the yoke, and saws planks
building the cart again.
You can find this poem in The Selected Poems of Donald Hall and the children's book Ox-Cart Man illustrated by Barbara Cooney.
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Hopeby Lisel Mueller
It hovers in dark corners
before the lights are turned on,
it shakes sleep from its eyes
and drops from mushroom gills,
it explodes in the starry heads
of dandelions turned sages,
it sticks to the wings of green angels
that sail from the tops of maples.
It sprouts in each occluded eye
of the many-eyed potato,
it lives in each earthworm segment
surviving cruelty,
it is the motion that runs
from the eyes to the tail of a dog,
it is the mouth that inflates the lungs
of the child that has just been born.
It is the singular gift
we cannot destroy in ourselves,
the argument that refutes death,
the genius that invents the future,
all we know of God.
It is the serum which makes us swear
not to betray one another;
it is in this poem, trying to speak.
You can find this book in Alive Together.
Photo by Reynaldo #brigworkz Brigantty on Pexels.com
Moon Tonightby Gwendolyn Bennet
Moon tonight,
Beloved . . .
When twilight
Has gathered together
The ends
Of her soft robe
And the last bird-call
Has died.
Moon tonight—
Cool as a forgotten dream,
Dearer than lost twilights
Among trees where birds sing
No more.
Find this poem on Poets.org.
Samhainby Annie Finch
(The Celtic Halloween)
In the season leaves should love,
since it gives them leave to move
through the wind, towards the ground
they were watching while they hung,
legend says there is a seam
stitching darkness like a name.
Now when dying grasses veil
earth from the sky in one last pale
wave, as autumn dies to bring
winter back, and then the spring,
we who die ourselves can peel
back another kind of veil
that hangs among us like thick smoke.
Tonight at last I feel it shake.
I feel the nights stretching away
thousands long behind the days
till they reach the darkness where
all of me is ancestor.
I move my hand and feel a touch
move with me, and when I brush
my own mind across another,
I am with my mother's mother.
Sure as footsteps in my waiting
self, I find her, and she brings
arms that carry answers for me,
intimate, a waiting bounty.
"Carry me." She leaves this trail
through a shudder of the veil,
and leaves, like amber where she stays,
a gift for her perpetual gaze.
Find this poem on the Poetry Foundation website.
To Autumnby John Keats
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.
You can find this poem on the Poetry Foundation.
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Tasting the Wild Grapesby Mary Oliver
The red beast
who lives in the side of these hills
won’t come out for anything you have:
money or music. Still, there are moments
heavy with light and good luck. Walk
quietly under these tangled vines
and pay attention, and one morning
something will explode underfoot
like a branch of fire; one afternoon
something will flow down the hill
in plain view, a muscled sleeve the color
of all October! And forgetting
everything you will leap to name it
as though for the first time, your lit blood
rushing not to a word but a sound
small-boned, thin-faced, in a hurry,
lively as the dark thorns of the wild grapes
on the unsuspecting tongue!
The fox! The fox!
You can find this poem in American Primitive: Poems.
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Swimming in the Rainby Chana Bloch
Swaddled and sleeved in water,
I dive to the rocky bottom and rise
as the first drops of sky
find the ocean. The waters above
meet the waters below,
the sweet and the salt,
and I'm swimming back to the beginning.
The forecasts were wrong.
Half the sky is dark
but it keeps changing. Half the stories
I used to believe are false. Thank God
I've got the good sense at last
not to come in out of the rain.
The waves open
to take in the rain, and sunlight
falls from the clouds
onto the face of the deep as it did
on the first day
before the dividing began.
You can find this poem in Swimming in the Rain.
A Song for Autumnby Mary Oliver
In the deep fall
don’t you imagine the leaves think how
comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don’t you think
the trees themselves, especially those with mossy,
warm caves, begin to think
of the birds that will come – six, a dozen – to sleep
inside their bodies? And don’t you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
vanishes, and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its
bellows. And at evening especially,
the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.
You can find this poem on the Poetry Foundation website.
Here are a few of my favorite sources of inspiration and learning from the past week or so. Enjoy!
Podcasts: As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been listening to Brendon Burchard’s Motivation podcast. It has helped pull me out of the doldrums and rekindle my vision for my business, my relationships, and my every day life. He’s a bit “Energizer Bunny”, which you might expect from a motivational speaker. I highly respect him though because he’s built six multi-million dollar companies with the personal growth, mindset, and business acumen that he shares on both his Motivation and Marketing Podcasts.
If you’re a business owner or simply trying to uplevel in any area of your life, give Brendon’s podcasts a try! Yes, you’ll definitely pick up on that masculine energy, although he preaches rest, relaxation, and refueling as well as focus, scheduling, and simple hard work.
Books: This week I read The Vibrant Years by Sonali Dev and was absorbed into the story from page one. It unfolds the story of Bindu, a sixty-something grandmother, as well as her forty-something daughter-in-law and granddaughter Cullie. These three women, at different times in their lives, are discovering who they are at their various ages, healing from past hurts, falling in love, and certainly not living by societal standards. It’s exciting, heartwarming, and all I’ll say is it ends on a positive note. I need this kind of book in my life.
I’m reading The Joy and Light Bus Company from Alexander McCall Smith. If you’ve never tried The Number 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Series, I recommend them so highly! I’ve been reading and re-reading these (on Audible only) for years. I love the slow pace, the characters that return in each book, the soft and witty humor, the conundrums and mysteries they work through and solve, the accents, the bush tea drinking. This is Book 22 and the next one in the series is in my Audible queue waiting to be read. They are delightful.
Essential oil blend: I am blowing my own trumpet here. Recently I filled some new bottles of my Winter Wellness Diffuser Blend, and said, “This blend smells so good!” And it’s very helpful for supporting respiratory health, decongesting stuffy noses, as a cough suppressant, and to boost immune strength. I’ve been using it in my bedroom diffuser at night to help keep my nose clear. It works!
That’s all for this week, friends! I hope you check some of these favorites out and let me know if you do. (For the full list including poetry, exercise, music, and more books, joinmy Patreon at the Literary Society Tier or higher.)
Life of Kim 