Welcome to Sunday Poetry.  If this is your first visit you can read about the purpose and inspiration of my Sunday blogs here.

Friday was the first day of fall, and deserves a poem in commemoration. I’ve chosen Autumn  Movement by Carl Sandburg, and because it’s in public domain, I can quote it here.   

Autumn, a time of pumpkins and cornstalks, harvest celebrations, and ghosts and ghoulies trick-or-treating on our doorsteps, is also a time of endings.  Sandburg doesn’t dwell there, but talks about “new beautiful things” to come, suggesting that change is just that, and not to be feared.

As a girl in Florida, autumn, which promised the relief of blazing temperatures and high humidity, was a favorite season, while summer was something to dread.  Later in my life, when I lived in a town with heavy snowfall which often started in autumn, my preferences reversed. 

Which season speaks most clearly to you?  Do you, too, cry over beautiful things in autumn?

Autumn Movement

by

Carl Sandburg

I cried over beautiful things knowing no beautiful thing lasts.

The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper sunburned woman, the mother of the year, the taker of seeds.

The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full of holes, new beautiful things come in the first spit of snow on the northwest wind, and the old things go, not one lasts.

Remember there are no quizzes here, no right ways to read or contemplate the poem we share.  No dissecting allowed.  Just come along for the “read,” and enjoy the experience.    What line, word or thought will you carry along with you this week?  And if you’d like to tell us where the poem took you?  We’ll listen.