Poetry Friday: October

My mom took this photo down the street from my parents' house, the house where I spent six months this year after the earthquake. Where I live, October is mud season, mosquito season, raining on people in tents season. It gives me pleasure to think sometimes about the beauty of October in other places.

Since I had been doing that by reading October poems with my seventh graders (so many poets have written about this month!), I was interested to get this in my Poem-A-Day email from Poets.org the other day. I hadn't seen this Robert Frost poem before and I love it. I love the way Frost attempts to slow down the October morning so that it will last longer, and I love the way his poem allows us to enjoy that morning many years after the lines were written.

My favorite line is "Hearts not averse to being beguiled." My heart is not averse to being beguiled by an October morning far north of my tropical island. This year it will have to be beguiled only in memory and imagination.



October
by Robert Frost

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
To-morrow's wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
To-morrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow,
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know;
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away;
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes' sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes' sake along the wall.

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.