Autumn Chill

At a time when hurricanes lash to the south and north, it is trivial to note that autumn arrived on the 22^nd last week accompanied by an abrupt change of local weather in NJ from balmy late summery to crispy fall-like. Nonetheless it did. A cold wind chilled in the morning. We may yet get toasty days (maybe even weeks) before frost settles in, but they will be short-lived checks on the general decline of the number displayed by the thermometer that hangs outside my back door.
 
Though a plurality of Americans tell pollsters that autumn is their favorite season, it is not mine. (I admit that Halloween and Thanksgiving are fun holidays, but they would be just as fun were they celebrated at any other time of year.) As I grow older I cling to summer longer. I ignore the “unofficial end of summer” on Labor Day (for non-American readers, that is the first Monday in September) as artificial. If temperatures permit the self-deception I ignore the equinox itself. I can’t ignore the closing of the pool. That happened today, so summer is over, even for me. I’ll soon be raking leaves. Then comes the solstice, but I hardly want to think of that now.

Poet and novelist (he preferred to be called a poet) Robert Graves asserted that all true poetry is about the seasons as a metaphor for the cycle of life from birth to love to aging to death (or vice versa). It may not be obvious at first glance but at least some element of that has to be in a poem for it to speak to us at a primal level. You can write verse about other things (motorcycle parts, for instance), he argued forcefully, but not poetry. I’m not sure he was right, but I understand (and feel) what he was getting at. My sister (1950-95) was the poet of the family, so perhaps I’ll let her finish this welcome (if such it is) to autumn.
 
Lakeside Campsite in September by Sharon Bellush
 
I have
An abominable awareness
Of the soles of my feet. They
Are sand-stung, unused
To pebbly lake bottoms, pine needle
Beds –
My feet sting and my breath
Draws deeply, nostrils
Flared to absorb
The air that forces
Coolness into well-heated lungs –
The twilight turns the
Sun from bright to
Smoldering metallic rose and
Seething wavelets draw the
Fury down
To the level of docks, and lake and sand –
And me –
I stick a toe into the pinkness
And it numbs –
The ruggedness of all I feel
Intrigues me; I am a match
For the brittle dusk
 
The campsite is calm, the wind
Is dying, a burnt-wood smell
Drifts into the sun – I watch
It sink, impaled for a time
On a mountaintop –
Waves of purple, vermilion
And green shoot up
To the clouds
In a symphony of
Lonely light –
I turn to replenish the fire.
 
-- 100 of Sharon’s poems are posted at my Richard’s Novel Ideas blogsite: https://richardbellushjr.blogspot.com/.
 

Buck 69 – Cold Wind