The Fall

“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.”

Not here. Not now.

The wind whips leaves from the trees
In showers of red, orange, yellow.
They carpet the ground with softness, damp and yielding underfoot.

Horse chestnut trees scatter their spiky husks,
And here is a conker:
Round shiny treasure like polished mahogany
Sitting abandoned on the soggy leaves
But not for long.
Children will take it to its new home.

Now the rain comes
Sideways in the buffeting wind.
Head, neck, trousers cold and colder
As we run for home.

Later we look out through rain-flooded windows
Hot tea in hand
At the October storm that is stripping the trees
Naked.

What else will fall?

Autumn is not a gentle season
In England
Now.

Poetry

I was looking for fun things for writers to do when they want to procrastinate relax from their labours and I found the Madlib site for generating poetry.

I had a go at it and it produced this:

slow park's slow park 
rhythmically i have never walked, majestically beyond
any flower, your door has their pink:
in your most slimy skater are things which spread me,
or which i cannot procrastinate because they are too quick

- fairyhedgehog & e.e. cummings

(I tidied up a few verb endings etc.)

What gets to me is that this is no worse than any poetry I could  write. Except for the title. I could do better than that.

For me, writing poetry is a whole other thing, not even slightly related to writing prose and I wouldn't know where to begin. If you write poetry, how do you do it?

Favourite poem

I realised that I haven't included much poetry in this blog. Mostly because I'm not particularly into poetry but there are some that stand out for me.

I was reminded recently of one of my favourites. It's variously quoted and I'll give you the version I know best which maybe isn't the most accurate.

O Westron Wind when wilt thou blow?
The small rain down can rain.
Christ! That my love were in my arms
And I in my bed again.

Anon.

I love the sudden switch from the beautiful evocation of boredom and grey rainy days to the sudden longing for the lover. I prefer short poems on the whole.

"Death and Life"

– Charles Carroll Bombaugh, Gleanings for the Curious from the Harvest-Fields of Literature, 1890

While I was Stumbling around online, I found this unusual poem on a blog called Futility Closet. There are a lot of interesting oddities on the blog, not all to do with words.

I rather like this poem. I think it has something to do with the sense I had of solving a puzzle the first time I read it.