When Autumn Flares Out

Fall Song

Mary Oliver

Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,
 
the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadows, unmattering back
 
from the particular island
of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere
 
except underfoot, moldering
in that black subterranean castle
 
of unobservable mysteries - roots and sealed seeds
and the wanderings of water. This
 
I try to remember when time's measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn
 
flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay - how everything lives, shifting
 
from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.

Photo by Lolly Jewett

Mary Oliver, the prolific and Pulitzer-winning poet, walked frequently around the woods and shorelines of her home in Provincetown, MA. She drew so much inspiration from her surroundings that she took to stashing pencils along her routes, the better to capture any fresh but fleeting observations.

Maybe the outlines of Fall Song were scribbled on such a stroll, as she contemplated the overlap of decay and rebirth. Her words evoke a strange combination of loss and hope. I’m not sure there’s a word in English for that feeling, so I’m grateful she’s found a way to express it.

The second movement of Beethoven’s Sonata in C Minor Op. 13 creates a similar mood for me. Listen and see if you agree.