Time's Most Favored Season

Laguna Beach Nursery and Garden Center, California
Don't let anyone tell you that autumn doesn't come to Southern California!
These are without a doubt the most amazing pumpkins and
the most beautiful harvest displays that I've seen all season!

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"Ada had tried to love all the year equally . . .
Nevertheless, she could not get over loving autumn best . . . "
~ Cold Mountain ~ Charles Frazier ~

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Almost Halloween, that mystical half - way point between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice! Like Frazier's Ada, I too have a heart that favors fall. In fact, one of my favorite poets, Lee Perron, claims that even Time loves autumn best:

Fall Arrives
Fall arrives, time’s most favored season—
at last the heart, the mind loosens its fist
so that I no longer need to know who I am

I return to the hills and the great presences—
light, heat, clouds, the bull pines—
to recover for myself the purity of the falling world
to enfold it like a pearl in the mind’s silence

I read the calligraphy of the oaks against
the fading skies, the grass bending in the meadow,
the last robins— I’m a circle reaching
the first place for the first time

for in youth among fall leaves I refused
to acknowledge the ancient writing—
that the basket of summer empties, that
the hours of men are as wind-driven clouds—
and yet among fall leaves
I was overjoyed with the beauty of loss

now I stand on autumn’s wooded knoll
that my life too may vanish,
that night may fall into the earth’s arms

time is calling her trout
from their playgrounds in the sea
to river mouth, and redemption, and fury

it is by means of the long delay
that we come to the righteousness of passion.

by Lee Perron
Contemporary American Poet & Antiquarian Bookseller

For this poem and more, by
Janis Ian, Stephen Stills, Michael Lipsey, the Little Prince,
the prophet Jeremiah, Green Day, and Optimism Revolution

see my latest post
about autumn, time, and contentment

"My Times"

on
The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker
A fortnightly [every 14th & 28th]
literary blog of connection & coincidence; custom & ceremony