Compiling these lists helps me anticipate the change of season by reminding me of the beauty in each month. Fall is my favorite season in many ways and October embodies it beautifully. We are leaving summer, summer is leaving us as autumn shares her glory and we soak up the sun while we can.
As with all my poetry collections, I share a few lines, not necessarily the first ones, to give you a taste of what you'll find if you follow the link to savor the whole poem.
"Outside" by Dolores Stewart
October. Its brilliant festival of dry
and moist decay. Its spicy, musky scent.
"A Leaf" by Bronislaw Maj
A leaf, one of the last, parts from a maple branch:
it is spinning in the transparent air of October, falls
on a heap of others, stops, fades.
"Some October" by Barbara Crooker
Some October, when the leaves turn gold, ask
me if I've done enough to deserve this life
I've been given.
"Into this Foggy Morning Comes a Song" by Judith Heron
driven by no other instrument than dew
how it gathers into one small drop
falls from a fading apple leaf
"Ode to October" by MK Creel
October lulls us with
its smoky, cinder scent—
leaf pyres, Hickory bark,
pine sap and pith.
"Reel" by Barbara Crooker
It's half-past October, the woods
are on fire, blue skies stretch
all the way to heaven.
"Early October Snow" by Robert Haight
The pumpkins, still in the fields, are planets
shrouded by clouds.
The Weber wears a dunce cap
and sits in the corner by the garage
where asters wrap scarves
around their necks to warm their blooms.
"October's Bright Blue Weather" by Helen Hunt Jackson
O suns and skies and clouds of June,
And flowers of June together,
Ye cannot rival for one hour
October's bright blue weather;
"October-Midst" by Eve Merriam
The mornings careless, sun-sprawled, radical with light,
roller-coaster air; plunging to bottomless bright
then giddying climb to shattering sky-sight
blue!
"Flathead Lake, October" by Geraldine Connolly
so too, autumn descends,
to steal the glistening
summer from our open hands.
"October" by Robert Frost
O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow's wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
"October 10" by Wendell Berry
Now the only flowers
are beeweed and aster, spray
of their white and lavender
over the brown leaves.
"Mystery" by C.G. Hanzlicek
Roots, the leaves turning,
The spiders hard at their geometry lessons,
The seed that obeys perfectly
Its own limits,
The worms turning among the leaves,
Turning the leaves to compost,
A Year of Poems
