October 10, 2007
Wednesday

Now constantly there is the sound,
quieter than rain,
of the leaves falling.
      — Wendell Berry, b. 1934
           American man of letters
           “October 10”

I don’t have much of a narrative to give today. This post is mostly an excuse to quote Wendell Berry’s poem and to show this picture of my back yard, taken this morning. The weather has finally turned fall-like, the air redolent of nuts and apples. There were periods today when I went outside and just sat beside the pond, listening to the sound that was indeed quieter than rain. I alternated this with periods of sitting at my kitchen table (this is the view from that spot) with my pen and notebook but not writing much, just looking at the light, both outside and inside, where the bits of metallic gold in the wallpaper are magnified by the golden light streaming from the sun that every day rides lower above the meadow.

I came upon Berry’s poem from becoming reacquainted with A Year in Poetry, described as “a treasury of classic and modern verses for every date on the calendar.” I’ve used this volume from time to time, usually when I’ve felt I’ve gone too long without poetry, when I remember the advice of some literary thinker (Kerouac? Fitzgerald? Kunitz? someone I heard at Bread Loaf?) that you need to read some poetry every day in order to feed your soul. I’ll use it for a week or so, and then I’ll hit a run of poems about ancient battles or historical figures I have no interest in (like hitting the “begats” when you’re trying to read the Bible through). I allow it to fall lower in the pile of books I keep at hand, and finally I put it away.

There are some poems I read every year at this time, particularly Mary Oliver’s “In Blackwater Woods” and Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “Spring and Fall: To a Young Child,” which begins, “Margaret, are you grieving . . . ?” Most of my favorite autumn poems (okay, most of my favorite poems in general) are about loss and regret at not having paid enough attention to that which has been lost.

Dylan Thomas, however, born on October 27, 1914, sings of the beauty of the season as he begins his “thirtieth year to heaven” and walks about “in a shower of all my days.” Even the rainy weather and the “blue altered sky” cannot keep him from remembering and honoring the “true joy” of his life. “O may my heart’s truth/ Still be sung/ On this high hill in a year’s turning.” Alas, he would see the year turn only nine more times, and be dead of the ravages of alcoholism before he’d completed his fortieth year.

I’ve already seen twenty more year’s turnings than Dylan Thomas did. But I am in a time in my life when change, maybe profound change, is inevitable, and sometimes I wonder how many more year’s turnings I’ll have that view from my kitchen table that I love so much. May my heart’s truth still be sung at the edge of this broad vista for many more years, and may I never fail to love it well.