Autumn leaves
Hello all,
There's no news whatsoever. This is just to say (as William Carlos Williams would say) that for those of us up here in the far north, the autumn colors have exploded in all their red-orange-salmon-pink-yellow glory. The sumac and maples are spectacular. I was down in Iowa City day before yesterday giving a lecture (it's Mental Illness Awareness Week, folks--get on the NAMI.org website and update yourselves on the Mental Health Parity Bill that FINALLY!! passed), and yesterday I drove back up to Minneapolis. Heavy rains made the leaves a surreally brilliant blur of color as I flew up Highway 80 on my way home. There's nothing like the north in fall, and it got me to thinking about one of my favorite poems, by the wonderful Michael Delp (who still teaches at Interlochen):
Going north means going
into something deeper than silence.
Mist hangs for hours in the woods
and the apparitions singing in dreams
know places we will never see.
You will know you are north
by the edges of the day
and the slight aura surrounding the trees.
Something in your muscles will be trying
to remember ancient directions,
the way into old hunting grounds,
and if you died and someone
threw your bones into the water
they would swim together
and form a long arrow pointing north.
Today's one of those fall days that makes a person want to curl up in their chair and read poems. So I went to the bookshelves (which, sadly, as you know, are NOT organized as they should be) and poked around looking for fall poems. October must be the most written-about month in the year, except for the entire e.e.cummings ouvre (I've always wanted to use that word) on spring. But of the many many October and autumn poems I found, this is the one that best suits the day. It's by the Russian poet Bella Akhmadululina: "Autumn."
Not working, not breathing,
the beehive sweetens and dies.
The autumn deepens, the soul
ripens and grows round;
drawn into the turning color of fruit,
cast out of the idle blossoms.
Work is long and dull in autumn,
the word is heavy.
More and more heavily, day by day,
nature weighs down the mind.
A laziness like wisdom
overshadows the mouth with silence.
Even a child, riding along,
cycling into the white shafts of light,
suddenly will look up
with a pale, clear sadness.
*
..."A laziness like wisdom..." What could be better than that? I leave you with the autumn deepening, and the soul ripening and growing round.
Peace,
M
There's no news whatsoever. This is just to say (as William Carlos Williams would say) that for those of us up here in the far north, the autumn colors have exploded in all their red-orange-salmon-pink-yellow glory. The sumac and maples are spectacular. I was down in Iowa City day before yesterday giving a lecture (it's Mental Illness Awareness Week, folks--get on the NAMI.org website and update yourselves on the Mental Health Parity Bill that FINALLY!! passed), and yesterday I drove back up to Minneapolis. Heavy rains made the leaves a surreally brilliant blur of color as I flew up Highway 80 on my way home. There's nothing like the north in fall, and it got me to thinking about one of my favorite poems, by the wonderful Michael Delp (who still teaches at Interlochen):
Going north means going
into something deeper than silence.
Mist hangs for hours in the woods
and the apparitions singing in dreams
know places we will never see.
You will know you are north
by the edges of the day
and the slight aura surrounding the trees.
Something in your muscles will be trying
to remember ancient directions,
the way into old hunting grounds,
and if you died and someone
threw your bones into the water
they would swim together
and form a long arrow pointing north.
Today's one of those fall days that makes a person want to curl up in their chair and read poems. So I went to the bookshelves (which, sadly, as you know, are NOT organized as they should be) and poked around looking for fall poems. October must be the most written-about month in the year, except for the entire e.e.cummings ouvre (I've always wanted to use that word) on spring. But of the many many October and autumn poems I found, this is the one that best suits the day. It's by the Russian poet Bella Akhmadululina: "Autumn."
Not working, not breathing,
the beehive sweetens and dies.
The autumn deepens, the soul
ripens and grows round;
drawn into the turning color of fruit,
cast out of the idle blossoms.
Work is long and dull in autumn,
the word is heavy.
More and more heavily, day by day,
nature weighs down the mind.
A laziness like wisdom
overshadows the mouth with silence.
Even a child, riding along,
cycling into the white shafts of light,
suddenly will look up
with a pale, clear sadness.
*
..."A laziness like wisdom..." What could be better than that? I leave you with the autumn deepening, and the soul ripening and growing round.
Peace,
M
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