Fall, Leaves, Fall

Eliot Hodgkin

Fall, Leaves, Fall

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;

Lengthen night and shorten day;

Every leaf speaks bliss to me

Fluttering from the autumn tree.

I shall smile when wreaths of snow

Blossom where the rose should grow;

I shall sing when night’s decay

Ushers in a drearier day.

Emily Dickinson

What a departure from the expected, to encourage the leaves to fall, to impatiently wave flowers away! Miss Dickinson has an independent, contrary mind. When we bemoan the seasonal change, she cheers it on. Urging the darkness to come, she actually anticipates the shorter days. And that amazing line, "Every leaf speaks bliss to me/Fluttering from the autumn tree." Well, I can see that. Today especially is one of those where the sun has backlit the trees, so that the gold and scarlet and orange flame up, and seem incandescent with light, with an inner fervour. I love summer, but summer doesn't burn and blaze like autumn. Autumn is alive with fire, with a combusting, consuming energy. And each detail, each leaf, is individual in its change. Each its own work of art; it's own palette of colour and pattern of splotched decay. I can see that this is a kind of bliss. And the poem goes further, speaks of snow as a wreath and a blossom, and I can't disagree with that either. Snow is gorgeous. A white, untouched field of snow is a kind of heaven. The millionfold sparkle that reminds us of diamonds or stars - and the knowledge that each flake is utterly its own self, its own shape, and unique from all others - I agree, this is a wonder. Why would I not look forward with expectation to all these?! But then she says the strangest thing, she says (as if it were the culmination after a long period of waiting), that at the dawn of a grey and dreary day, "I shall sing."

I shall sing!!

Really? Hmmm. And then I think, well, yes, like the leaves speaking bliss to her in their falling and dying, the poet also sings (to herself, to us, to all who listen) in the dreariness, the greyness of life, because she herself is fervent with colour and fire, because she is blazing. Because she too has a leaf-like beauty, a beauty deepened over many seasons of growth and decline, the colours of victories and loss, and she has something to look back on and something to look forward to. She has something to sing about. (And for.)

My gosh, is it possible that we do too?