I'm doing something lame for Poetry Thursday today.

I'm telling you this right away, so if there's anyone here who happens to read my blog religiously, you won't feel all gypped when you read today's poem, and your razor-sharp intellect instantly recalls that I posted this same poem two years ago (apparently my life runs in two year cycles).

I'm sorry for being so unoriginal, but I can't help it. There is no other poem I know of that describes today so perfectly. As I walked to kindergarten today with the girls today, Lucy was gathering pine cones and Beth was skipping along the path through the golden-brown field, and there were just a few crunchy leaves on the ground and a few red-gold leaves on the trees. The sun was out, but the air was deliciously cool, and the sky was a hundred shades of blue.



Can you tell I like fall?

So, in honor of the first day of October and autumn beauty and poetry, here's my favorite fall-weather poem.

October's Bright Blue Weather

O suns and skies and clouds of June,
And flowers of June together,
Ye cannot rival for one hour
October's bright blue weather;

When loud the bumble-bee makes haste,
Belated, thriftless vagrant,
And Golden-Rod is dying fast,
And lanes with grapes are fragrant;

When Gentians roll their fringes tight
To save them for the morning,
And chestnuts fall from satin burrs
Without a sound of warning;

When on the ground red apples lie
In piles like jewels shining,
And redder still on old stone walls
Are leaves of woodbine twining;

When all the lovely wayside things
Their white-winged seeds are sowing,
And in the fields, still green and fair,
Late aftermaths are growing;

When springs run low, and on the brooks,
In idle golden freighting,
Bright leaves sink noiseless in the hush
Of woods, for winter waiting;

When comrades seek sweet country haunts,
By twos and twos together,
And count like misers, hour by hour,
October's bright blue weather.

O suns and skies and flowers of June,
Count all your boasts together,
Love loveth best of all the year
October's bright blue weather.

--Helen Hunt Jackson