Nothing gold can Stay

Nature’s first green is Gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay

Robert Frost

Leaves fall

Fall, leaves, Fall; die, flowers, away;

Lengthen night and shorten day;

Every leaf speaks bliss to me

Fluttering from the autumn tree.

I shall smile when wreaths of snow

Blossom where the rose should grow;

I shall sing when night’s decay

Ushers in a drearier day.

Emily Bronte

The heat of autumn

is different from the heat of summer.

One ripens apples, the other turns them to cider.

One is a dock you walk out on,

the other the spine of a thin swimming horse

and the river each day a full measure colder.

A man with cancer leaves his wife for his lover.

Before he goes she straightens his belts in the closet,

rearranges the socks and sweaters inside the dresser

by color. That’s autumn heat:

her hand placing silver buckles with silver,

gold buckles with gold, setting each

on the hook it belongs on in a closet soon to be empty,

and calling it pleasure.

Jane Hirshfield

First fall

I’m your guide here. In the evening-dark

morning streets, I point and name.

Look, the sycamores, their mottled,

paint-by-number bark. Look, the leaves

rusting and crisping at the edges.

I walk through Schiller Park with you

on my chest. Stars smolder well

into daylight. Look, the pond, the ducks,

the dogs paddling after their prized sticks.

Fall is when the only things you know

because I’ve named them

begin to end. Soon I’ll have another

season to offer you: frost soft

on the window and a porthole

sighed there, ice sleeving the bare

gray branches. The first time you see

something die, you won’t know it might

come back. I’m desperate for you

to love the world because I brought you here.

Maggie smith

Perhaps the World Ends Here 

The world begins at a kitchen Table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and cJoy Harjorying, eating of the last sweet bite.

Joy Harjo

Sunset of the City 

Already I am no longer looked at with lechery or love.

My daughters and sons have put me away with marbles and dolls,

Are gone from the house.

My husband and lovers are pleasant or somewhat polite   

And night is night.

It is a real chill out,

The genuine thing.

I am not deceived, I do not think it is still summer   Because sun stays and birds continue to sing.

It is summer-gone that I see, it is summer-gone.   

The sweet flowers indrying and dying down,

The grasses forgetting their blaze and consenting to brown.

It is a real chill out. The fall crisp comes.   

I am aware there is winter to heed.   

There is no warm house

That is fitted with my need.

I am cold in this cold house this house

Whose washed echoes are tremulous down lost halls.

I am a woman, and dusty, standing among new affairs.   

I am a woman who hurries through her prayers.

Goodwyn brooks

Song for Autumn

In the deep fall

don’t you imagine the leaves think how

comfortable it will be to touch

the earth instead of the

nothingness of air and the endless

freshets of wind? And don’t you think

the trees themselves, especially those with mossy,

warm caves, begin to think

of 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

vanishes, and the white field over which

the fox runs so quickly brings out

its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its

bellows. And at evening especially,

the piled firewood shifts a little,

longing to be on its way.

Mary Oliver

*The collection of Poems for Autumn