The Single Day
Sept 25 2014


This far north
it's always September.
The single day, the fortuitous hour
when the leaves are at their peak
and the sun is low,
so they seem to glow
with their own internal light.

And another
when the lawn is thick with leaves.
Crisply rustling
as you push your way through,
like a kid, in rubber boots
dragging his feet
kicking up showers.
Or whipped into windrows
in the lee of a fence, a tumble-down shed,
soft, against the house.
Before the first wet snow,
a cold matted mess
just as well left
until spring.

Fall is like a minor note
between summer's symphony
and winter's dirge,
a held breath
before the full-throated roar
of the self-important seasons.
Because looking back, or looking ahead
you might easily ignore
its fleeting brilliance;
the melancholy palette
of crimson, and rust,
the bittersweet scent
of woodsmoke.

You never know
when that day will come;
and when it does
only in retrospect.
The morning after
the day before,
when you notice the trees
have thinned just a bit,
the leaves
are a little more dull.


I'm starting to like fall the best. But its always a little neglected: like spring, a transitional season, sandwiched between the summer we wait for all year, and the foreboding imminence of winter. And this fleeting quality is reinforced by the brief height of its beauty: that single day all year, when the the leaves are perfect. And then the next, when a day late you realize that's it for fall. So in this poem, I'm trying to convey is a sense of impermanence, evanescence, the swiftness of time. And also how you must remain watchful, observant, and alert, or risk having the subtle beauties and small pleasures pass you by.

I can't tell you how challenging it is to write something that hasn't already been written about the autumn leaves. I began this with a feeling of resignation: along the lines of of "OK, I'll quickly jot something down, get this out of my system, and then move on to something clever and personal and utterly original." But having worked it more than a "quick jot", I'm pleased with having coaxed something fresh and interesting (I hope!) from the same old fall.

The first two lines were a big challenge. Because I thought that if I wrote anything at all like "autumn leaves" or "fall colours", most readers would immediately roll their eyes and turn the page. So I kind of like the concise and ambiguously alluring "This far north ..."; as well as the intentional misdirection of "it's always September", with its "when" left unsaid.

"...soft, against the house" was a kind of throwaway: just trying something out (almost as a place-holder) because I left "tumble-down shed" feeling it sounded incomplete, and needed another line. But I immediately liked this image: in trying to reinforce the sense of crisp weightless leaves, it needed nothing more than that single short simple word -- "soft" -- to contrast with the "cold matted mess" that comes next. I often over-write. But the best poetry is all about minimalism, compression, distillation: less is almost always more. So when I succeed at that, when I can discipline my tendency to pile on the words, I find it deeply satisfying. (Then I go and write a blurb like this, and get all that pent-up prolixity out of my system!)

I also like "self-important seasons". I think this nicely conveys the idea of two big swaggering seasons, and a modest fall, bracketed in between. I also like the accumulation of modifiers -- "minor note" ..."melancholy" ..."bittersweet" -- that I think help confer on fall its precious fleeting quality.

And it hardly needs saying that the kid in rubber boots is irresistible!