Thinking of Autumn

Autumn is my favorite time of year--the air turns cool and crisp, walking barefoot across the grass gives your feet a chill, and, even in sun-parched Texas, the colors become more vibrant, though not as brilliant as the hardwoods in New England, which are breathtaking. It makes me happy just to know the colors are occuring somewhere that I could visit if I really wanted to...

It's the time of year when Fran and I first started dating, and eventually the season we chose for our wedding (14 years this October!)

Football season starts, Halloween, baseball season ends, school starts (first it was college for me and now it's elementary school for my son, Ryan).

It feels a little cheesy to really like a poem that I had to memorize while (whilst) I was in high school--I wish I could say I was reading volumes of poetry and ran across this as my privately discovered favorite. In this case, I liked this poem even when I was cramming it into my brain during the car ride to school that fall morning twenty or so years ago, knowing I would have to recite it in front of the class (flawlessly, and with feeling).

A Vagabond Song

THERE is something in the autumn that is native to my blood—
Touch of manner, hint of mood;
And my heart is like a rhyme,
With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.

The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry
Of bugles going by.
And my lonely spirit thrills
To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills.


There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir;
We must rise and follow her,
When from every hill of flame
She calls and calls each vagabond by name.

Bliss Carmen