October

I am happy to say that the older I get the more I appreciate poetry. Poetry, apparently, takes more wisdom, perception, or perhaps an openness that I simply didn't possess when I was 16 or even 25. And even now, in my wise old age, I still don't sit down and read volumes of poetry for fun. But certain sights and experiences sometimes make me wonder what the poets have had to say about it. And, almost always, the month of October makes me feel particularly poetic. Here are some gems I found when I looked up October poetry:

"Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns." - George Eliot

"Bittersweet October. The mellow, messy, leaf-kicking, perfect pause between the opposing miseries of summer and winter."

- Carol Bishop Hipps; In a Southern Garden

"O suns and skies and clouds of June,
And flowers of June together,
Ye cannot rival for one hourOctober's bright blue weather."

"I know the year is dying,

Soon the summer will be dead.

I can trace it in the flying

Of the black crows overhead;

I can hear it in the rustle

Of the dead leaves as I pass,

And the south wind's plaintive sighing

Through the dry and withered grass.

Ah, 'tis then I love to wander,

Wander idly and alone,

Listening to the solemn music

Of sweet nature's undertone;

Wrapt in thoughts I cannot utter,

Dreams my tongue cannot express,

Dreams that match the autumn's sadness

In their longing tenderness."

- Mortimer Crane Brown, Autumn Dreams

"When gentians roll their fingers tight

To save them for the morning,

And chestnuts fall from satin burrs

Without a sound of warning;

When on the ground red apples lie

In piles like jewels shining,

And redder still on old stone walls

Are leaves of woodbine twining;

When all the lovely wayside things

Their white-winged seeds are sowing,

And in the fields still green and fair,

Late aftermaths are growing;

When springs run low, and on the brooks,

In idle golden freighting,

Bright leaves sink noiseless in the hush

Of woods, for winter waiting;

When comrades seek sweet country haunts,

By twos and twos together,

And count like misers, hour by hour,

October's bright blue weather."

- Helen Hunt Jackson, October's Bright Blue Weather

And that's not even including Robert Frost and other great ones!