Fall seems to be the time of speeding up — but also of slowing down.
The academic year begins; schools and families launch into a flurry of activity; summer sleepiness rouses into the frenzy of harvest and winterization (and I don’t just mean the fields and tractors). On the other hand, something in the soul wants to pause, look around, and simply breathe.
My instinct as the weather turns colder has always been to slow down and focus more — which is probably why it’s my ideal poetry-writing season — so it’s particularly difficult to handle the inevitable rush of activity that fall brings with it. Just when my instinct is telling me to slow the pace, seventy-two urgent things fly at me from all directions.
But moments of wonder and quiet contemplation still come up, even in the midst of the rush…if I allow it. If, for example, I look up as I walk, instead of looking forward or down and simply worrying about everything I have to do. Then, I can breathe.
Sometimes I even stop and stare like a person who has never seen a tree before — and I reclaim some of that time and space that everything outside wants to crowd and grab for itself.
Which brings me to today’s poem, written about a week ago after my morning walk into central campus …
October Canopy
Edges on fire, I lift on air
and scatter my light in sparks
on the wandering heads of students
looking up to wonder one second
what that must be like, up there
agleam and waving in breathless blue.
I’M ON FIRE, I’ll reply,
AND I’M FROZEN because that breeze
is frigid and giddy, whipping me up
through vacant brightness stretching on
far beyond my heart’s borders,
this heart still summer-green…
Yet I twist and toss my sparks
like flashing candies from parades
because I’m here, I’m alive,
I’m living,
and when I burn and freeze at once
I make them STOP
(so they can see).
Try it — wherever you are, whatever season it might be now. Look up.
(Side note: the featured photo is one of my own, taken on an October walk through Akademgorodok, Novosibirsk, Russia.)
Lovely poem… Autumn is truly beautiful. Teheran poem was very visual for me.. Lovely
Looks like my spell checker didn’t like me or my fingers were not dainty enough for my keyboard. I forgot to add, when I 1st got into photography, one of my 1st photos was directly up through an autumn canopy.
All the best
David