Fall & Winter Verse

It seems like a poetry kind of day.

Poetry. Thoughts that travel from the head through the heart and out through the fingers to become words on paper.

God’s Grandeur
By Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

The Road Not Taken
By Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Song for Autumn
By Mary Oliver

Don’t you imagine the leaves dream now
how comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of the air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don’t you think
the trees, especially those with
mossy hollows, are beginning to look for

the birds that will come—six, a dozen—to sleep
inside their bodies? And don’t you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
stiffens and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
its long blue shadows. The wind wags
its many tails. And in the evening
the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.

Leaves
by Elsie N. Brady

How silently they tumble down
And come to rest upon the ground
To lay a carpet, rich and rare,
Beneath the trees without a care,
Content to sleep, their work well done,
Colors gleaming in the sun.

At other times, they wildly fly
Until they nearly reach the sky.
Twisting, turning through the air
Till all the trees stand stark and bare.
Exhausted, drop to earth below
To wait, like children, for the snow.

Theme in Yellow
By Carl Sandburg

I spot the hills
With yellow balls in autumn.
I light the prairie cornfields
Orange and tawny gold clusters
And I am called pumpkins.
On the last of October
When dusk is fallen
Children join hands
And circle round me
Singing ghost songs
And love to the harvest moon;
I am a jack-o’-lantern
With terrible teeth
And the children know
I am fooling.

 This one was written by my mother.  It’s not a masterpiece but, because it is part of my history, it means a lot to me.

My maternal Grandma Ellen and my cousin Tom. Grandma died in 1940, nearly seven years before I was born.

Days On The Farm

The garden is dying, all weedy and brown
Dotted with pumpkins and squash on the ground.
The birds on the wind are honking goodbye;
I watch them in silence and heave a big sigh,
To mourn for the passing of summer’s last cry.
God gave us this beauty, for soon we will know
The grimness of winter and new fallen snow.

God, please give us one more time
To see things grow,
To be on the farm
That we all love so.

Let loved ones come
Both young and old
Just one more time
Before it is sold.

My mom, Aunt Anna, Uncle Ross and his wife Helen, Aunt Verna, Aunt Sarah, my daughter and her cousin. This was about 1972.

Just one more season
Of early morns
When bird songs
Herald a new day born.

Walking the pathways
Thinking our thoughts
Praising the Lord
For all He has wrought.

Young people laughing
Under the tree
Bout what we can’t share,
Contented and free.

My daughter with her cousin on the old family homestead. You can see the windmill behind them, and an old bus that they used as a clubhouse.

Raspberry picking
Strawberries too,
Hot in the sun
For our young and old crew.

Home to the kitchen
For lunch and a drink
It is good to be home
And just sit and think.

Busy in the kitchen
Cooking a meal;
Stuff from the garden,
And baking with zeal.

O God, in your mercy
Let us once more
Walk that dear earth
As we’ve done before.

The world is a clamor
A noise and a shout,
But here it is quiet,
Your world all about.

We thank you our Father
For your tender care.
For giving the strength
To work, aches to bear.

One day at a time
So special and dear
We count every hour
They are precious this year.

Written in the fall of 1979, the year my Aunt Anna died. My mother, daughter, aunt, and cousin stayed with her at the family farm every summer for several years. This is where my mother and her siblings were born, where her father worked the land.

They had one more year, then the farm was sold, and all of my Aunt Anna’s things too. My mother and Aunt Verna went out and locked the door; it was a sad year.

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4 Responses to Fall & Winter Verse

  1. ernnburn's avatar ernnburn says:

    Thank you Stella for sharing!

    Liked by 1 person

  2. czarina33's avatar czarina33 says:

    My mother, too, loved poetry. She recited bits of poems spontaneously at appropriate times.

    Liked by 2 people

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