You Can Close Your Eyes
Nov 8 2010


Our version of fall
is a frumpy librarian
in a modest dress and sensible shoes,
glaring sternly at noise-makers.

No loud displays.
No scarlet show-offs
suffused with light
against crisp blue sky.
No, our trees are quiet, studious
well-behaved.
Mostly yellow foliage
that’s gone in the first stiff wind
well before the clocks turn back.
Gloomy days, and colder rain
waiting for snow.

But this fall was golden
— warm and dry
and slow.
Like a hushed reading room
with clerestory windows
lined with darkly polished wood.

I hear myself crunch
through crisp piles of leaves,
filling ditches
thick to leeward
blown into windrows.
A thin skim of ice
clings to the shore,
tinkling like a million tiny wind chimes
as open water
laps at its edge.
And a rustling in the airy woods
as small furry creatures
dig-in against the cold.

In the honeyed hush
of a fall like this one
you can close your eyes.
Find a place
in the afternoon sun
between long low shadows
and listen carefully,
feeling the unexpected warmth
on your up-turned face.
More literary fiction
than best-seller,
more Haiku, than epic,
the attentive reader
will get her reward.

This northern fall
this fleeting season
is like a single page
between summer and winter,
quickly turned.



After wavering between summer and winter (never spring!), this golden fall has made me think it’s my favourite season after all – as fall always used to be. As the poem says, unusually “warm and dry/and slow”, unlike the cold wet gloom of last year.

It will never be a visually spectacular fall, this far north. But that just encouraged me to tune in to its subtle beauty; and especially its sound. Just imagine, experiencing the beauty of fall with your eyes closed! So the 5th stanza is really where the poem began: crunching through thick piles of leaves; the delicate skim of ice, that literally tinkled in a light breeze; a rustling in the woods, followed by the appearance of a juvenile porcupine, about to experience his very first winter.

I don’t know why the librarian came to mind, except that I was thinking about the unnatural quiet, and immediately pictured her stern glare and strenuous shushing. So, of course, I had to let the metaphor lead me through the rest of the piece – through the reading room, the brief poem, the single page.

It’s challenging to write another poem about fall that anyone would want to read. Hasn’t it all already been said? And these lyric poems about nature can get pretty tired and formulaic. So I hope I managed to meet the challenge, and come up with something worth reading.