The season of Fall has long had a special grip on me. Something exhaling, because it is over. Something coming, that isn't yet. I have often wondered if this time taps into something inherent within me or is simply something of nostalgia. Either way, the signals of the transition are resplendent -- color, coolness, and crunch. I am alive.
My 'Friday Poem' selection for the week, entitled "October":
Bending above the spicy woods which blaze,
Arch skies so blue they flash, and hold the sun
Immeasurably far; the waters run
Too slow, so freighted are the river-ways
With gold of elms and birches from the maze
Of forests. Chestnuts, clicking one by one,
Escape from satin burs; her fringes done,
The gentian spreads them out in sunny days,
And, like late revelers at dawn, the chance
Of one sweet, mad, last hour, all things assail,
And conquering, flush and spin; while, to enhance
The spell, by sunset door, wrapped in a veil
Of red and purple mists, the summer, pale,
Steals back alone for one more song and dance.
-- Helen Hunt Jackson
