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Friday, October 28, 2011

One More Time For Autumn

Poetry Friday this week - with Diane Mayr from Random Noodling)


         This Moment Fills Me

So, I am driving back home with my husband.  
This October seventeenth was chilly and gray and I asked did
he notice the wind soughing through the trees, sending
the leaves through the air, swirling and twirling
along the street, into the gutters and against the windshield?
Late autumn had appeared too soon, and I wished to hurry home
to bring in wood and build a fire and make soup. 
Because of the darkening sky, my thoughts leapt into To Kill A Mockingbird,
remembering Harper Lee’s Halloween scene with the children: 
shadowy woods, wind there too, blowing through the trees,
moving the dead leaves about
with a hand unseen, but felt.  And then Bilbo popped in and
that time early in The Hobbit,
moving off with the dwarfs to the adventures Gandalf had laid out for them,
away from the fields and woods so familiar, the harvest in.
I place myself too into a time of darkness and chill one Halloween
when my fairy costume was covered by a wool coat, the weather
uncooperative on that All Hallow’s Eve for a little girl wishing to be pretty.
That evening now mostly cheer and candy for little children  
is not far from now, that time that seems to turn the season and we say
goodbye to autumn with its trick and treat summer days,
to harvest home and leaves and rakes and squash. 
Colder nights will come, and woolen throws will be upon us,
And we will stay inside and read stories as the outside sleeps.

10 comments:

  1. And we will stay inside and read stories as the outside sleeps.

    Yes, we will!

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  2. "the wind soughing through the trees"

    "Soughing" -- like "sighing" but with a fuller and rounder vowel sound.

    I love it.

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  3. "...woolen throws will be upon us. And we will stay inside and read stories as the outside sleeps." Lovely. I also love the connections to Scout and Bilbo, drawn like neighbors into the October scene.

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  4. Ah, I'm almost wanting winter to come now...almost!
    BTW, that's why we were ALWAYS ghosts. Sheets could cover winter coats that were necessary by Halloween in Maine.

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  5. I love the juxtaposition of your own memories against the memories of favorite woodsy book scenes. I always thought I was the only one who connected life to books (as opposed to the other way around). I love fall and I am not ready to embrace wintry fall days. This is a beautiful tribute to those "trick and treat summer days" of fall that are behind us.

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  6. Like all the other comments above, I love the last two lines the most. I also enjoyed how the references and allusions are to books I loved and enjoyed when I was younger - seeing the world through the lenses of beloved characters or lines from a worn and tattered page of a book - priceless.

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  7. I love how fall in books has become woven into your experience of fall. From Patrick Ness' THE ASK AND THE ANSWER: "We are the choices we make."

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  8. What great connections. You bridge those connections with memories and emotions. Thank you for sharing.

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