If you've read The Q, you might recall James Arch soliloquizing about Fall. He can't stop from paying homage to the season, a most dedicated acolyte before the alter of harvest and beguiling air and expressions of wild and complex color. Well. James Arch and I feel *VERY* fiercely about this wonderful tumble down season of Fall. Fall!

In the Emily books, by L.M. Montgomery, the acidic yet wise Mr. Carpenter complains that too much poetry is written because of Spring. {Can there be too much?} He certainly is right in that it inspires verse after verse after verse. And I do not deny those immortal months their due. But I find myself loving in unspeakable ways the decent into color and harvest and mortality. Let it be the Autumn where I find my poetry. The crisp turn of the air. The twisting to dust. The scent that reminds me Euphoria and Melancholy can inhabit the same moment with such complex perfection that my soul is left shaking. Fall. I wish to hold the minutes of the season in my hand, like time worn coins out of the pocket of a favorite jacket, and spend them fully, deliberately. I want to fling myself into the season with utter abandon and yet remain completely conscious, wide-eyed, watchful. I want to LIVE these days, to say nothing of all the poetry I wish to read.

"A scent of ripeness from over a wall." - Robert Frost

"Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away; Lengthen night and shorten day; Every leaf speaks bliss to me..." - Emily Bronte

"How stand the cottages of men In these fair October days." - Henry David Thoreau

"O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stained With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit Beneath my shady roof; there thou mayest rest..." - William Blake

"Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness." - John Keats

Well. I could go on. Perhaps that is enough reverie for even a dark October night.

Perhaps.

A photograph I took at Rivendell in October 2013

Subscribe to our mailing list