AUTUMN WHISPERS

All things on earth point home in old October; sailors to sea, travelers to walls and fences, hunters to field and hollow and the long voice of the hounds, the lover to the love he has forsaken.

Thomas Wolfe

Nothing stirs the soul like autumn.  We awake from the nepenthean sleep of summer and witness something even more beautiful than we imagined —  more beautiful perhaps because we are forced the recognize the transient nature of what we love.  It is a time for reckoning,  a time to discard the frivolous and return to our essence, a time to prepare for the coming winter.  That is why, as Thomas Wolfe observed, all things point to home in late October.  Home is the place where our hearts find solace, the place where our authentic lives are rooted, the place where we will wait like the ancients for the reassurance of another spring.

Some of our finest poets have meditated on the implications of autumn for the human spirit.  What they have to say is much of what I feel during these closing days of October. What you take from these poems will depend upon where you are at this point in your own personal journey.  Enjoy.

                                    A certain day became a presence to me;

                                    there it was, confronting me -- a sky, air, light:

                                    a being.  And before it started to descend

                                    from the height of noon, it leaned over

                                    and struck my shoulder as if with

                                    the flat of a sword, granting me

                                    honor and a task.  The day's blow

                                    rang out, metallic -- or it was I, a bell awakened,

                                    and what I heard was my whole self 

                                    saying and singing what it knew: I can.

Denise Levertov

"Variation on a Theme by Rilke"

                                     Withered vines, gnarled trees, twilight crows,

                                     river flowing beneath the little bridge,

                                     past someone's home.

                                     The wind blows from the west

                                     where the sun sets, it blows

                                     across the ancient road,

                                     across the bony horse,

                                     across the despairing man

                                     who stands at heaven's edge.

Ma Chih-Yuan

"Meditation in Autumn"

                                     Nature's first green is gold,
                                     Her hardest hue to hold.
                                     Her early leaf's a flower;
                                     But only so an hour.
                                     Then leaf subsides to leaf.
                                     So Eden sank to grief,
                                     So dawn goes down to day.
                                     Nothing gold can stay.

Robert Frost
"Nothing Gold Can Stay"

         

                                  Lord, it is time.  The summer was so great,

                                  Impose upon the sundials now your shadows

                                  and round the meadows let the winds rotate.

                                      

                                  Command the last fruits to incarnadine;

                                  vouchsafe, to urge them on into completeness,

                                  yet two more south-like days; and that last

                                        sweetness,

                                  inveigle it into the heavy vine.

                                  He'll not build now, who has no house awaiting.

                                  Who's now alone, for long will so remain:

                                  sit late, read, write long letters, and again

                                  return to restless perambulating

                                  the avenues of parks when leaves downrain.

Rilke

"Autumn Day"

                                   The leaves are falling, falling as from far,

                                    as though above were withering farthest gardens;

                                    they fall with a denying attitude.

                                    And by night, down into solitude,

                                    the heavy earth falls far from every star.

                                    We are all falling.  This hand's falling too —

                                    and have this falling-sickness none withstands.

                                    And yet there's One whose gently-holding hands

                                    this universal falling can't fall through.

   

Rilke
"Autumn"

Peace to Everyone!