October / Louise Driscoll

October

When my hills stand ablaze with gold and red,
    And I can hear the harsh-voiced leader cry
    As wild geese, like a necklace on the sky,
Are seen for a brief moment overhead,
Then I remember what my lover said.
    No bird of Spring, however joyously
    Singing arpeggios on a lilac tree,
Can speak to me so plainly of the dead.
    October, bringing gaudy mysteries,
With smell of burning leaves and dripping sound
As frost freed nuts come dropping to the ground,
    With late, red apples glowing on the trees
    Like lanterns at some feast of memories,
The spell of death and silence has unbound.

~~
Louise Driscoll (1875-1957)
from The Garden of the West, 1922

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]

Louise Driscoll biography

John S. Turner, A skein of geese flying above Tesco, Broughton Park (detail).

CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.