Here is a spine-tingling poem for the season, by my friend Isabel Zuber, poet and novelist. It is from her as yet unpublished manuscript of poems, RED LILY.
END OF OCTOBER
Tonight's their time but they came early,
have been here all day, watching
from among the trees, rustling faded grass.
They speak in whispers too low for sound,
seem to approve the way we've let the place
go to wild and ruin, its hedges pokeweed--
bright, beautiful poison--
tangles of rose, honeysuckle.
Clouds come and go as I hang out the clothes
with them still observing it all. Then later
I sense what could have been their breath
as I unpin warmed white sheets,
sun-fragrant towels, the shirts.
Do they think they've been summoned?
I know better than to do that, yet
strain to hear voices in the leaves.
"Why have you left me?" they call.
But to the evening's strange
and rising wind I say nothing. They linger
for any who will listen but by now
they have no differences and
all their smiles are grave.
(Isabel Zuber)
2 comments:
Here's a poem sent in by North Carolina Arts Council Lit. Director, Debbie McGill, in response to my invitation to readers to submit favorite autumn poems. This poem happens to be one of my favorites, too.
Thanks for this invitation, Kay. One of my favorites is this, by the Irish poet Gerard Manley Hopkins:
Spring and Fall
to a young child
MÁRGARÉT, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves, líke the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Áh! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
I love the way Hopkins packs grief and hope into the line, "It is the blight man was born for." And the poem's music ("worlds of wanwood leafmeal") gives me goosebumps.
Oct.31, 2008
Hello Kay and Isabel,
I like reading this poem over and over again
as the wind sighs and the leaves on my trees
whisper. Who knows what darkness will bring.
Nancy Simpson
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