Autumn charms my melancholy mind

 The last day of November: the feast of Saint Andrew, and all kinds of Advent customs begin today.

It was rainy and grey and I made Christmas cookies, and listened to Christmas music.

We had another death here,  the third one in three weeks.  The sister was 98, and had just had surgery for a broken hip.  The surgery went well, and she was doing well, when all of a sudden - !!!  

artist: William Hawkins

I like this poem, by an author I'd never heard of:

Do not try to save

the whole world

or do anything grandiose.

Instead, create

a clearing

in the dense forest

of your life

and wait there

patiently,

until the song

that is your life

falls into your own cupped hands

and you recognize and greet it.

Only then will you know

how to give yourself

to this world

so worthy of rescue.

 

~ Martha Postlethwaite

 

artist:  Katrin Weitz Stein

I like this one, also:

November

 

by Elizabeth Stoddard

 

Much have I spoken of the faded leaf;

Long have I listened to the wailing wind,

And watched it ploughing through the heavy clouds;

For autumn charms my melancholy mind.

When autumn comes, the poets sing a dirge:

The year must perish; all the flowers are dead;

The sheaves are gathered; and the mottled quail

Runs in the stubble, but the lark has fled!

Still, autumn ushers in the Christmas cheer,

The holly-berries and the ivy-tree:

They weave a chaplet for the Old Year's heir;

These waiting mourners do not sing for me!

I find sweet peace in depths of autumn woods,

Where grow the ragged ferns and roughened moss;

The naked, silent trees have taught me this,—

The loss of beauty is not always loss!

 

artist: Jo Grundy

and this one, from one of my favorite poets, Wallace Stevens:

 

"It is hard to hear the north wind again,
And to watch the treetops, as they sway.

They sway, deeply and loudly, in an effort,
So much less than feeling, so much less than speech,

Saying and saying, the way things say
On the level of that which is not yet knowledge:

A revelation not yet intended.
It is like a critic of God, the world

And human nature, pensively seated
On the waste throne of his own wilderness.

Deeplier, deeplier, loudlier, loudlier,
The trees are swaying, swaying, swaying."

-   Wallace Stevens, The Region November

artist: Matthew Hasty

Such is Hope

 

artist:  Jo Grundy

Sonnet XVIII. to the Autumnal Moon

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

 

Mild Splendour of the various-vested Night!

Mother of wildly-working visions! hail!

I watch thy gliding, while with watery light

Thy weak eye glimmers through a fleecy veil;

And when thou lovest thy pale orb to shroud

Behind the gather’d blackness lost on high;

And when thou dartest from the wind-rent cloud

Thy placid lightning o’er th’ awakened sky.

Ah, such is Hope! As changeful and as fair!

Now dimly peering on the wistful sight;

Now hid behind the dragon-wing’d Despair:

But soon emerging in her radiant might

She o’er the sorrow-clouded breast of Care

Sails, like a meteor kindling in its flight.

 

The bare sun, skinned, slides through the grass

 Lord, now let your servant go in peace...

Sister Margaret John Kelly died last night at age 88.  I was blessed to be with her when she died.

She had been my major professor for English during my college years; a wonderful teacher. She also was an alumna of my college, fourteen years older.  She suffered greatly through the last three years, battling against the dementia which left her without speech, and without independent movement.

She loved poetry.

Here are some November poems, sadly, not by me:

November, Late in the Day

BY JOHN M. RIDLAND

So this is aging: the bare sun, skinned,

palely bucking the dark wind,

slides through the glass, crawls on the carpet,

climbs the footboard, lies crosswise on the blanket,

a spoiled dog waiting to be fed.

 

Not now, dear warmth. The kindling’s in the shed,

too far to fetch. Those two great logs that close

together to make fire, repose

apart, an old couple reminiscing

on conflagrations they’re now missing:

how every sunny Saturday afternoon,

Hey, diddle-diddle, the dish ran away with the spoon.

 

Not yet, dear spoon. Some hotter day, dear dish.

No tidbits now. Instead, let’s make a wish,

and boil fresh water for the small teapot

to keep it piping hot.

Source: Poetry (February 2011)

 

Thank You

BY ROSS GAY

If you find yourself half naked

and barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing,

again, the earth's great, sonorous moan that says

you are the air of the now and gone, that says

all you love will turn to dust,

and will meet you there, do not

raise your fist. Do not raise

your small voice against it. And do not

take cover. Instead, curl your toes

into the grass, watch the cloud

ascending from your lips. Walk

through the garden's dormant splendor.

Say only, thank you.

Thank you.

 

the long days of God

Art by Steve Sanderson

On this eve of Thanksgiving, I am particularly focused on my teachers from all these many years ago.

More on that tomorrow.

 In the meantime, here's a poem from John Greenleaf Whittier:

 

My Triumph
John Greenleaf Whittier

The autumn-time has come;
On woods that dream of bloom,
And over purpling vines,
The low sun fainter shines.

The aster-flower is failing,
The hazel’s gold is paling;
Yet overhead more near
The eternal stars appear!

And present gratitude
Insures the future’s good,
And for the things I see
I trust the things to be;

That in the paths untrod,
And the long days of God,
My feet shall still be led,
My heart be comforted.

O living friends who love me!
O dear ones gone above me!
Careless of other fame,
I leave to you my name.

Hide it from idle praises,
Save it from evil phrases:
Why, when dear lips that spake it
Are dumb, should strangers wake it?

Let the thick curtain fall;
I better know than all
How little I have gained,
How vast the unattained.

Not by the page word-painted
Let life be banned or sainted:
Deeper than written scroll
The colors of the soul.

Sweeter than any sung
My songs that found no tongue;
Nobler than any fact
My wish that failed of act.

Others shall sing the song,
Others shall right the wrong,—
Finish what I begin,
And all I fail of win.

What matter, I or they?
Mine or another’s day,
So the right word be said
And life the sweeter made?

Hail to the coming singers!
Hail to the brave light-bringers!
Forward I reach and share
All that they sing and dare.

The airs of heaven blow o’er me;
A glory shines before me
Of what mankind shall be,—
Pure, generous, brave, and free.

A dream of man and woman
Diviner but still human,
Solving the riddle old,
Shaping the Age of Gold!

The love of God and neighbor;
An equal-handed labor;
The richer life, where beauty
Walks hand in hand with duty.

Ring, bells in unreared steeples,
The joy of unborn peoples!
Sound, trumpets far off blown,
Your triumph is my own!

Parcel and part of all,
I keep the festival,
Fore-reach the good to be,
And share the victory.

I feel the earth move sunward,
I join the great march onward,
And take, by faith, while living,
My freehold of thanksgiving.

 

Bee in the Morning Glory       photo by Julie Zickefoose

 

In today's sharp sparkle

 The temperature was 22 degrees here this morning.  Slowly I am dismantling the garden, now full of blackened and shrivelled branches.

But also full of white-throated sparrows and juncos, and , I hope, Evening Grosbeaks.

photo by Diane Porter

White-throated Sparrow.  photo by Bill Hubick

Here's a poem by Elizabeth Alexander:

Praise Song for the Day

A Poem for Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration

 

Each day we go about our business,

walking past each other, catching each other’s

eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.

 

All about us is noise. All about us is

noise and bramble, thorn and din, each

one of our ancestors on our tongues.

 

Someone is stitching up a hem, darning

a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,

repairing the things in need of repair.

 

Someone is trying to make music somewhere,

with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,

with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

 

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky.

A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.

 

We encounter each other in words, words

spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,

words to consider, reconsider.

 

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark

the will of some one and then others, who said

I need to see what’s on the other side.

 

I know there’s something better down the road.

We need to find a place where we are safe.

We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

 

Say it plain: that many have died for this day.

Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,

who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,

 

picked the cotton and the lettuce, built

brick by brick the glittering edifices

they would then keep clean and work inside of.

 

Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.

Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,

the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.

 

Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,

others by first do no harm or take no more

than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?

 

Love beyond marital, filial, national,

love that casts a widening pool of light,

love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

 

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,

any thing can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

 

praise song for walking forward in that light.

Copyright © 2009 by Elizabeth Alexander. All rights reserved. 

 

The Dances you've already had

 

Lately I've been remembering the dances I've already had - the romantic ones with boys/men a long time ago.  I now know that at least three of those boys/men have passed on. That's something else I've considered:  the synonyms for "died":   passed on,  passed away,  etc.  One of my sisters always says

"Gone to God."   The dogs and cats who have "crossed the Rainbow Bridge"  

I still have the image in my head from when my dad died. I visited him on a Wednesday, and on the following Friday I was at a meeting in Buffalo and got a call from the nursing home that he had died in his sleep in the middle of the afternoon.  I envisioned him on a small boat, moving away from the shore of the living on the sea of eternity, quietly moving on, his face toward the horizon.

art by D.D. McInnis

and this poem, from Joy Harjo:

REMEMBER

Remember the sky that you were born under,

know each of the star’s stories.

Remember the moon, know who she is.

Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the

strongest point of time. Remember sundown

and the giving away tonight.

Remember your birth, how your mother struggled

to give you form and breath. You are evidence of

her life, and her mother’s, and hers.

Remember your father. He is your life, also.

Remember the earth whose skin you are:

red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth

brown earth, we are earth.

Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their

tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,

listen to them. They are alive poems.

Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the

origin of this universe.

Remember you are all people and all people

are you.

Remember you are this universe and this

universe is you.

Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.

Remember language comes from this.

Remember the dance language is, that life is.

Remember.

by Joy Harjo *(Muscogee/Creek Nation, 3rd term US Poet Laureate).

 

Autumn charms my melancholy mind

 

Art by Dee Nickerson

Here's a poem by Elizabeth Stoddard:

November

Much have I spoken of the faded leaf;

Long have I listened to the wailing wind,

And watched it ploughing through the heavy clouds;

For autumn charms my melancholy mind.

When autumn comes, the poets sing a dirge:

The year must perish; all the flowers are dead;

The sheaves are gathered; and the mottled quail

Runs in the stubble, but the lark has fled!

Still, autumn ushers in the Christmas cheer,

The holly-berries and the ivy-tree:

They weave a chaplet for the Old Year's heir;

These waiting mourners do not sing for me!

I find sweet peace in depths of autumn woods,

Where grow the ragged ferns and roughened moss;

The naked, silent trees have taught me this,—

The loss of beauty is not always loss!

 

Art by Lucy Grossmith

Full moon nights

 Jane Madgwick   Chalk Line, Moonlight, 2016

Rob Gonsalves    Over the Moon

Here's a poem by Maggie Dietz:

November

Show's over, folks. And didn't October do

A bang-up job? Crisp breezes, full-throated cries

Of migrating geese, low-floating coral moon.

 

Nothing left but fool's gold in the trees.

Did I love it enough, the full-throttle foliage,

While it lasted? Was I dazzled? The bees

 

Have up and quit their last-ditch flights of forage

And gone to shiver in their winter clusters.

Field mice hit the barns, big squirrels gorge

 

On busted chestnuts. A sky like hardened plaster

Hovers. The pasty river, its next of kin,

Coughs up reed grass fat as feather dusters.

 

Even the swarms of kids have given in

To winter's big excuse, boxed-in allure:

TVs ricochet light behind pulled curtains.

 

The days throw up a closed sign around four.

The hapless customer who'd wanted something

Arrives to find lights out, a bolted door.

Maggie Dietz, "November" from That Kind of Happy.  Copyright © 2016 by The University of Chicago.  Reprinted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.

 

 

 

The future is a faded song

 

Tara Turner,  The Souls of Leaves

"I sometimes wonder if that is what Krishna meant -
Among other things - or one way of putting the same
    thing:
That the future is a faded song, a Royal rose or a lavender
    spray
Of wistful regret for those who are not yet here to regret,
Pressed between yellow leaves of a book that has never been
    opened.
And the way up is the way down, the way forward is the
    way back."

-   T. S. Eliot, The Dry Salvages, III

Brings many a loved friend to our sight

 

art by Janie Olsen

NOVEMBER SONG

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

To the great archer--not to him

To meet whom flies the sun,

And who is wont his features dim

With clouds to overrun--

But to the boy be vow'd these rhymes,

Who 'mongst the roses plays,

Who hear us, and at proper times

To pierce fair hearts essays.

Through him the gloomy winter night,

Of yore so cold and drear,

Brings many a loved friend to our sight,

And many a woman dear.

Henceforward shall his image fair

Stand in yon starry skies,

And, ever mild and gracious there,

Alternate set and rise.

 

Everhart Park in the Fall

"To appreciate the wild and sharp flavors of these October fruits, it is necessary that you be breathing the sharp October or November air.  What is sour in the house a bracing walk makes sweet.  Some of these apples might be labeled, “To be eaten in the wind.” It takes a savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild fruit. . . The era of the Wild Apple will soon be past.  It is a fruit which will probably become extinct in New England.  I fear that he who walks over these fields a century hence will not know the pleasure of knocking off wild apples.  Ah, poor soul, there are many pleasures which you will not know! . . . the end of it all will be that we shall be compelled to look for our apples in a barrel."

-   Henry David Thoreau