Happy Fall, y'all. (That might be the shortest hymn ever.)
And yet...this month, Tanita asked the Poetry Sisters to come up with more than a fall greeting. She asked us to write a hymn to Autumn in hymn meter. (More on hymn meter, here.)
I chose to write in "long meter" which is a form of hymn meter which has a rhyme scheme of ABAB and equal lines of iambic tetrameter. (Eight beats each line, da DUM, da DUM, da DUM, da DUM.) I didn't stick exactly to that; a few beats are off here and there (consider them acorns that squirrels buried and forgot to dig up) but I did enjoy writing about autumn in a way that encouraged both joy and sorrow.
If Apples were Dappled and Sweet
If apples were dappled and sweet,
If orchards were bee-thick with smell,
If thickets drew lovers unmeet,
I’d beckon to you, dear, as well.
For autumn is all of goodbye
And faring thee well, and godspeed;
We redden, we crumble, we dry
In casting our lives into seed.
So snap the stem of my neck, dear;
Let nightfall steal daylight from field;
If leaves rake our cheeks with gold smear,
Is Autumn but naught what it yields?
Thus, be apples, dappled and sweet;
Thus, be orchards, bee-thick with smell;
Thus, be thickets of lovers: meet,
and meet and meet ’til last farewell.
----Sara Lewis Holmes (all rights reserved)
Go see what hymns my Poetry Sisters are humming today:
Liz
Tanita
Kelly
Tricia
Laura
Andi
Poetry Friday is hosted today by Violet Nesdoly.
The goodbyes and then the snapping of the neck just throw me from one place of nostalgia to the violence of harvest and back... to the beethick orchards and the question, is autumn nothing but what it gives us?
ReplyDeleteIt's more... and it's less, and it's ...complicated, like so many things, which I think you reflect thoughtfully and beautifully in this piece!
Lovely, lovely. Fall has so many things going on--harvest and death, activity and pause.
ReplyDeleteI love this bittersweet poem, with the second stanza being my favorite (even though it makes me sad).
ReplyDeleteFor autumn is all of goodbye
And faring thee well, and godspeed;
We redden, we crumble, we dry
In casting our lives into seed.
I could sing this stanza over and over.
Mny lovely images of autumn here. Really like the "orchards bee-thick with smell," and the last two lines of the second stanza:
ReplyDelete"We redden, we crumble, we dry
In casting our lives into seed."
Another "live life to the fullest" theme! Might as well, eh? It's all the same in the end, so let's "meet,
ReplyDeleteand meet and meet ’til last farewell."
Oh! The bee-thick orchards, and the snapping of the apples' necks, and the farewells. I love the violence of the season here--beautiful, Sara!
ReplyDelete