Reckonings: a journal of justice, hope and history

Off to New England

 

I'm headed to New England tomorrow to enjoy the fall foliage. We get some out here on the northwest coast, but nothing like my Massachusetts homeland. Robert Frost's "Nothing Golden Can Stay" is in my mind:

 

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leafs a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

 

As William Prichard wrote, "It is as if Frost had in mind his later definition of poetry as 'a momentary stay against confusion.'"

 

October 10 - Wendell Berry

For today, October 10, and for nearly a lifetime, the poems, stories, novels and essays of Wendell Berry have been a model for me, a testament and witness to a full life in thoroughgoing relationship with others and with the earth.

 

October 10

by Wendell Berry

Now constantly there is the sound,
quieter than rain,
of the leaves falling.

Under their loosening bright
gold, the sycamore limbs
bleach whiter.

Now the only flowers
are beeweed and aster, spray
of their white and lavender
over the brown leaves.

The calling of a crow sounds
Loud — landmark — now
that the life of summer falls
silent, and the nights grow.