turn, turn, turn

I've always felt the ancient Celtic tradition of Samhain to fit best my feelings about this time of year. November was considered the beginning of the year. January's "New Year" never felt as significant to me. This season of the year evokes so much more for me and, I think, for so many people. We had a series of windy days last week and now most of the trees in my neighborhood have been denuded. I didn't realize until Friday night when I was walking from the train station. I had reached one of the close by community gardens and the fullness of the fall beauty of one of the trees, that overhangs the fence and provide desperately needed shade during the sweltering summer months, was considerably thinned. It's also why we commemorate the dead this time of year. We're reminded that the beauty of this life inevitably fades. That like the greening of life that Spring ushered in & that Summer brought into full ripening, we gain in the full glory of all our flowering by Fall and then we fade away. "To everything - turn, turn, turn. There is a season..."

Spring and Fall
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1918)

to a young child

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By & by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep & know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.