Falling Leaves and Early Snow

David Grossmann

Falling Leaves and Early Snow



 In the years to come they will say,
“They fell like the leaves
In the autumn of nineteen thirty-nine.”
November has come to the forest,
To the meadows where we picked the cyclamen.
The year fades with the white frost
On the brown sedge in the hazy meadows,
Where the deer tracks were black in the morning.
Ice forms in the shadows;
Disheveled maples hang over the water;
Deep gold sunlight glistens on the shrunken stream.
Somnolent trout move through pillars of brown and gold.
The yellow maple leaves eddy above them,
The glittering leaves of the cottonwood,
The olive, velvety alder leaves,
The scarlet dogwood leaves,
Most poignant of all.


In the afternoon thin blades of cloud
Move over the mountains;
The storm clouds follow them;
Fine rain falls without wind.
The forest is filled with wet resonant silence.
When the rain pauses the clouds
Cling to the cliffs and the waterfalls.
In the evening the wind changes;
Snow falls in the sunset.
We stand in the snowy twilight
And watch the moon rise in a breach of cloud.
Between the black pines lie narrow bands of moonlight,
Glimmering with floating snow.
An owl cries in the sifting darkness.
The moon has a sheen like a glacier.



Kenneth Rexroth
from The Collected Shorter Poems



"The year fades with the white frost."
"Deep gold sunlight glistens on the shrunken stream."
"Thin blades of cloud."
"We stand in the snowy twilight."

And then!
"An owl cries in the sifting darkness."


An owl cries in the sifting darkness? This is an accuracy of speech so exquisite I want to rave, make an idiot of myself, rant about poetry as an unparalleled instrument of clarity.
If snow is falling, it's like icing sugar being sifted. And it appears as if the darkness is being sifted. That's more than poetry, it's true. And what is falling? The snow or the darkness?

I love this poem. (I try not to say stupid things like that, but I'm stupid!) Every line is an image I know, that I recall from somewhere - an actual experience, a movie scene, a painting? Is there a collective soul? Is there a place where all beautiful memories and images converge? Where you and I remember the same moment, even though we have never met, and live half a world away? Is it possible? I need to think about this.

November Night

Kelly Sereda

November Night

Listen. .

With faint dry sound,

Like steps of passing ghosts,

The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees

And fall.

Adelaide Crapsey

What could I possibly add to that?

The Woodpile

Yuri Vasendin

The Woodpile

Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day,

I paused and said, 'I will turn back from here.

No, I will go on farther—and we shall see.'

The hard snow held me, save where now and then

One foot went through. The view was all in lines

Straight up and down of tall slim trees

Too much alike to mark or name a place by

So as to say for certain I was here

Or somewhere else: I was just far from home.

A small bird flew before me. He was careful

To put a tree between us when he lighted,

And say no word to tell me who he was

Who was so foolish as to think what he thought.

He thought that I was after him for a feather—

The white one in his tail; like one who takes

Everything said as personal to himself.

One flight out sideways would have undeceived him.

And then there was a pile of wood for which

I forgot him and let his little fear

Carry him off the way I might have gone,

Without so much as wishing him good-night.

He went behind it to make his last stand.

It was a cord of maple, cut and split

And piled—and measured, four by four by eight.

And not another like it could I see.

No runner tracks in this year's snow looped near it.

And it was older sure than this year's cutting,

Or even last year's or the year's before.

The wood was gray and the bark warping off it

And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis

Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle.

What held it though on one side was a tree

Still growing, and on one a stake and prop,

These latter about to fall. I thought that only

Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks

Could so forget his handiwork on which

He spent himself, the labor of his ax,

And leave it there far from a useful fireplace

To warm the frozen swamp as best it could

With the slow smokeless burning of decay.

Robert Frost

Mr. Frost, you puzzle. You speak lightly, as though we are friends to whom you were merely giving the details of the day. And yet – we know something is being said, something that matters (enough for you to write about, and as our friend, we trust your judgment), but it is so quickly spoken, it escapes us. What does this wary bird and this forgotten woodpile in the woods signify? Is simply it to say that we might be interested to know how in this bewildering, amorphous place we have come to, with so few distinguishing points that would help us find our way (and where all we know is that we are 'far from home'), there is a bird who behaves in a curiously human manner, and an abandoned woodpile made with obvious precision and effort? To know that even in this pathless wood there are signs of care, of vibrant life, instinct and movement, and that these things too, are paths, are ways along which to travel, ways of knowing where we are? Is that it? With you, Mr. Frost, I am never sure.