Hushed October Morning

Colors shining through our morning windows are now  brilliant as we expect from a New England Autumn.  Time to feed the birds, as the deck is cleared of the plants they love. Leave one plant, a fuscia as long as it lasts, for a stray hummingbird.  Could a hummer still linger in this frosty season?  They aren’t so hardy as those birds we help along all through the colder season.  When the Dutchman’s Pipe begins to fade, we know it is time for wood fires and maybe a long afternoon of reading poetry or the best novel just published.

Robert Frost will set the stage for Autumn:

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
To-morrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
To-morrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow,
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know;
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away;
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost–
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

 

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