The Heat of Autumn

By Jane Hirshfield

The heat of autumn is different from the heat of summer.
One ripens apples, the other turns them to cider.
One is a dock you walk out on,
the other the spine of a thin swimming horse
and the river each day a full measure colder.
A man with cancer leaves his wife for his lover.
Before he goes she straightens his belts in the closet,
rearranges the socks and sweaters inside the dresser
by color. That’s autumn heat:
her hand placing silver buckles with silver,
gold buckles with gold, setting each
on the hook it belongs on in a closet soon to be empty,
and calling it pleasure.


http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/jane-hirshfield

My Lady of Autumn

This is a video of Beggar's Velvet singing acapella, © My Lady of Autumn by Dave Webber. The photos are by Beth and Jim Boyle. The photos are of Fall in Western, NY. Beggar's Velvet was an outstanding UK group made up of Cathy & Charley Yarwood and Dave Webber & Anni Fentiman. Beggar's Velvet stopped performing in 1993 after eight successful and happy years but you can still buy their music!
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/beggarsvelvet

http://www.oldandnewtradition.com/

The scarlet of maples

"The scarlet of maples can shake me like a cry
Of bugles going by.
And my lonely spirit thrills
to see the frosty asters like smoke
upon the hills."
- William Bliss Carman

Turn Me to My Yellow Leaves

William Stanley Braithwaite


TURN me to my yellow leaves,
I am better satisfied;
There is something in me grieves—
That was never born, and died.
Let me be a scarlet flame
On a windy autumn morn,
I who never had a name,
Nor from breathing image born.
From the margin let me fall
Where the farthest stars sink down,
And the void consumes me,—all
In nothingness to drown.
Let me dream my dream entire,
Withered as an autumn leaf—
Let me have my vain desire,
Vain—as it is brief.

Gold Leaves

a poem by G.K.Chesterton



Lo! I am come to autumn,
When all the leaves are gold;
Grey hairs and golden leaves cry out
The year and I are old.

In youth I sought the prince of men,
Captain in cosmic wars,
Our Titan, even the weeds would show
Defiant, to the stars.

But now a great thing in the street
Seems any human nod,
Where shift in strange democracy
The million masks of God.

In youth I sought the golden flower
Hidden in wood or wold,
But I am come to autumn,
When all the leaves are gold.