Thank you, John.

Autumn

When leaves fall
my spirits rise.
(That isn't true
but sounded wise.)

Mother, Summer, I
by Philip Larkin

My mother, who hates thunderstorms,
Holds up each summer day and shakes
It out suspiciously, lest swarms
Of grape-dark clouds are lurking there;
But when August weather breaks
And rains begin, and brittle frost
Sharpens the bird-abandoned air,
Her worried summer look is lost.

And I her son, though summer-born
And summer-loving, none the less
Am easier when the leaves are gone;
Too often summer days appear
Emblems of perfect happiness
I can't confront: I must await
A time less bold, less rich, less clear:
An autumn more appropriate.

Autumn is icumen in

Autumn is icumen in
Lhude sing twittwu
Shrinkeþ sed
and dieþ med
and fallþ þe wde nu
Sing twittwu

Bereavements

When fall winds tear and twist sere leaves,
those falling leaves leave trees bereft.
Summer plumps up fleshy leaves
too soon transformed to severed leaves
falling like tears. The shriveled leaves
are drained of green and gold. Bereft.
When fall winds tear and scatter leaves,
those fallen leaves leave me bereft.

It is the autumn of the year,
The geese above are southward flying;
Election day is drawing near,
And politicians still are lying.

Douglas, ain’t it the truth!?


Acquainted with the Kite

after Frost, Schulz, Charlie Brown and Dante

I have been one acquainted with the kite.
I have exposed it to the wind and rain.
I have released my kite to errant flight.

I have relaxed fall flights near Lovers’ Lane.
I let it swoop near Lucy on our street
And looked away, expecting she’d complain.

It had annoyed some birds, who sang Defeat!
But I heard Marcie’s sigh and Snoopy’s cry.
And Pigpen’s: Do it, Chaz. Don’t get beat.

Make your gnarly marks up in the sky.
I let my paper kite rise out of sight
When Franklin shouted: Charlie, fly it high—

Kite-Eating Trees will always bite for spite!
I have been one acquainted with the kite.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poe...acquainted-wit


(Aside: That stilted column of I’s, and its repetitions elsewhere, along with all those end-stopped lines, make me suspect Frost isn’t crazy about N’s overly formalized egocentricity—as in, “Who in hell hasn’t been acquainted with the night!” Plus that evasive “time was neither wrong nor right”! Closing a neat, if not vicious, circle, arc-welded by the echoing rhymes of start and finish. I don’t buy that Frost himself was much depressed, but rather clever, as usual, in a roundabout way.)

The deep red leaves that sing of fall,
September’s highs, October’s fling,
lead me to scribble endless scrawl,
as banal as the writes of spring.

I live for the day
when the sunshine stops
the sky turns gray
and the temperature drops

because Louisiana summer
is a bummer.