WINTER AGAIN - by Steve Katz

 

WINTER  AGAIN by   Steve Katz another winter has come your head and hands go numb looking forward to the frost and snow nights spent near the fire watching the embers glow the cat snuggled in tight curl a nice mug of warm chocolate thaws out my nose and brings life back to my toes as I climb the wooden hill I think of all the nice things I like about this time of year

THE HUNT FOR THE NORTHERN LIGHTS - by Lesley Elaine Greenwood

 

THE  HUNT  FOR  THE  NORTHERN  LIGHTS by  Lesley Elaine Greenwood Snowy white fox of the Arctic,was it your brush-like tailthat sprayed snow, like crystal sparks,adorning the dark sky with a shimmering veil?Are you the Northern Lights ? Flourishing forest fungi,was it your luminescent glowthat ignited fires across the frozen North,covering the woodland floor, so very long ago?Are you the Northern Lights ? Plentiful waters of Laplandwas it the light falling into your seas,that reflected back off the fishes shiny, wet scalesinto the streams of the sky ? If so please,Are you the Northern lights ? Or was it the solar winds that, colliding with earth's gasses,started to glow, creating streamers in their masses?A magnificent array of colours. Reds, greens, violets, blues,A mystical curtain of  bright celestial hues.Constantly in motion.A beautiful blaze of auroral displaysAround Heaven's swirling ocean. AURORA BOREALIS !Trailing bands of luminous  plasma,Spellbinding, magical sights.A plethora of colourful waves from the  sun.Was He the creator of the wonderfulNorthern Lights ?

TO THE SEASONS - by Meredith Nicholson

 

TO THE SEASONS by  Meredith  Nicholson Seasons  that pass me by in varied mood,As on the impressionable land you leave a trace,Molding sometime a delicate flower’s sweet face,Touching again with green the somber wood,Or drawing all beneath a snowy hood,Am I not worthy as they to have a placeIn your remembrance? Am I made too baseTo know what weed and thorn have understood?Fair vernal time, I need your quickeningEven as the sleeping Earth! O summer heatMake flower and fruit in me that I may bringFull hands to Autumn when above me beatThe serious winds; and Winter, make me strongLike the glad music of your battle song!

AUTUMN - COLORING PAGES

 

COLORS OF AUTUMN - by Jim Foulk

 

COLORS  OF  AUTUMN  by  Jim Foulk I can smell fall in the air my eyes behold golden leaves as they descend slowly onto the ground the dying of summer brings on fall oh, the wonder of it all. The Autumn colors such a splendid marvel painted all around me covers me with feelings of compassion knowing this beauty that surrounds me, is only for a short time until all the land, will be barren on this spot, where I stand.

AUTUMN SONG - by Sarojini Naidu

 

AUTUMN  SONG by Sarojini Naidu Like a joy on the heart of a sorrow,   The sunset hangs on a cloud;A golden storm of glittering sheaves,Of fair and frail and fluttering leaves,   The wild wind blows in a cloud. Hark to a voice that is calling   To my heart in the voice of the wind:My heart is weary and sad and alone,For its dreams like the fluttering leaves have gone,   And why should I stay behind?

AUTUMN - by Evgeny Baratynsky

AUTUMN by  Evgeny Baratynsky 1 September's here! The sun each morning wakes                   a little later, its rays are colder, and in the shaky mirror of the lake                   it glitters tremulous and golden. Grey vapour shrouds the hilltops, and the dew                   drenches the flat lands by the river; The twisted oak twigs show a yellow hue,                   and the red leaves of aspen shiver; The birds no longer overflow with life, the forests and the skies have lost their voice. 2 September's here! The evening of the year                   is now upon us. Frost at morning already spreads its silver filigree                   over the fields and hills, and stormy Aeolus will awaken from his sleep,                   driving the flying dust before him, the wood will toss and roar, its falling leaves                   will strew the swampy valley bottom, and clouds will rise to fill the heavenly dome, and waters will grow dark in froth and foam. 3 Farewell, farewell, you brilliant summer skies!                   Farewell, farewell to nature's splendour! The waters gleaming in their golden scales,                   the woods with their enchanted murmur! Oh happy dream of transient summer joys!                   The woodmen's axes are disturbing the echoes in the emaciated groves,                   and all too soon the frozen river will be a mirror for the misty oaks and hills in their white covering of snow. 4 And now the villagers will find the time                   to gather in their hard-earned harvest; Hay in the valley is stacked up into piles,                   and in the corn the sickle dances. Over the furrows, once the grain is cleared,                   sheaves in stooks stand high and gleaming, or else they trundle past the empty field                   on loaded carts wearily creaking. The golden summits of the shining ricks rise up around the peasants' huddled shacks. 5 The village people celebrate the day!                   The barns steam merrily, the chatter of chains awakes the mill-stones from their sleep,                   and noisily they turn and clatter. Let the cold come! the farmer has saved up                   supplies to last him through the winter: his hut is warm, the bread, the salt, the cup                   of beer make welcome all who enter; without a care his family now can eat the blessed fruit of work in summer's heat. 6 And you, a labourer in the field of life,                   when you too move into your autumn and see the blessings of your earthly time                   spread out abundantly before you; when the rich acres ploughed by work and cares                   display the profits of your labours, rewarding you for all the weary years                   and you can reap the precious harvest, gathering the grain of long-considered thought, tasting the fullness of our human lot, - 7 will you be rich like the farmer with his spade?                   In hope, like him, the seed you scattered, and you too bathed in golden dreams that showed                   your rich rewards far in the future... Now you behold that day; greet it with pride                   and count your painful acquisitions! Alas, your passions, your dreams, your arduous road                   are buried in scorn, and your condition is the soul's irresistible disgrace, the sting of disappointment on your face! 8 Your day has risen; now you can clearly see                   the arrogance, the gullibility of youth, and you have plumbed the yawning sea                   of people's madness and hypocrisy. You, once enthusiasm's faithful friend,                   ardently seeking fellow-feeling, a king of brilliant vapours - in the end                   you contemplate a sterile thicket alone with misery; its mortal groan is barely muffled by your haughty soul. 9 But if your indignation's potent cry,                   or if a howl of urgent longing should rise out of the heart's dark misery,                   solemn and wild amid the thronging young boys and girls at their capricious games,                   their bones would shake in fear, the infant would drop its toys and in the midst of play                   set up a roar of pain, all gladness would vanish from its face; humanity would perish long before death set it free. 10 Be open-handed then; invite them all                   to join the feast, the whole clanjamfry! Let them all take their places in the hall                   around the gold-encrusted table! What tasty titbits you can offer them!                   What a display of dishes gleaming so variously! But they all taste the same                   and like the grave they make us tremble; sit there alone, perform the funeral rites for your soul's worldly, transient delights. 11 Whatever illumination in years to come                   may take possession of your fancy, whatever the last vortex of your thoughts                   and feelings may one day give birth to - let your triumphant and sarcastic mind                   suppress your heart's vain tremors and bridle the unprofitable wind                   of late laments. Then see the treasure you will receive, the greatest gift of life, experience, which binds the soul in ice. 12 Or else, in a life-giving surge of grief,                   casting aside all earthly visions, seeing their boundaries, and not far off,                   a golden land beyond the darkness, a place of redress, with a heart renewed                   dreaming dreams of benediction, and hearing those tumultous voices tuned                   to hymns of reconciliation, like harps whose over-lofty harmony is unintelligible to your human ear, - 13 before a vindicated Providence                   you will bow down, humble and thankful, with an unbounded hope and with the sense                   that you have reached some understanding - but know, you never will communicate                   your vision to your fellow-mortals; their frivolous souls will not appreciate                   true knowledge in society's bustle; knowledge of mountain peaks or of the deeps is not for earth, earth has no place for it. 14 The hurricane goes hurtling through the void,                   the forest raises up its voice in anger, the ocean foams and rages and its mad                   breakers explode against the shingle; so sometimes the dull rabble's idle minds                   are woken from their torpid slumber by the crude voice of commonplace, that finds                   a sonorous echo in their blether, but there will be no echo for the word that dominates the passions of the world. 15 What if a star from heaven disappears                   into the chasm of nothing, missing its way, and never finds its place again;                   another one replaces it unheeding. One star the less is nothing to the earth,                   our people are too hard of hearing to spot the distant howling of its death                   or see the brightness of a star appearing new born amid the sisters of the sky and greeting them with rapturous melody! 16 Winter draws on, and over the bare earth                   impotence stretches with a shiver, yet furrows overflow with golden ears,                   and all the cornfields gaily glitter. Life and death, want and wealth lie side by side -                   all the variety of the year that's vanished is equalised beneath a snowy shroud                   that hides it in indifferent sameness - thus all things lie before your eyes henceforth, but you will reap no harvest from the earth.  Translated from Russian by Peter France

AUTUMN SKETCH - by Jane Tyson Clement

AUTUMN  SKETCH by  Jane Tyson Clement The wind in the dry standing corn is the sound of many waters.(This is the season for remembering,for gathering in memories like flowers before frost.)Over the mountains the dark clouds of birds wheel and vanishand the air stills slowly with the beat of wingsin the light no longer.(This is the season for what is over and done with, finished.Hold no promise in your hands. Look to the earth no longer,nor to the sky, for the snows gather.)The wind through the standing corn is the murmur of many waters;look for frost on the hillside and milkweed podssmoking along the roads.(This is the season for remembering;blow on your hearth’s embers, and ask for a little whileno new springing.)

GROWTH - by Jane Tyson Clement

 

**

GROWTH by  Jane Tyson Clement At what instant does the summer change ?What subtle chemistry of airand sunlight on the clean and windsmooth sand ?The small birds at the water’s edge –yesterday they were not there.So suddenly the magic door is shut,the trio suddenly is done,the clasped hands inexplicably apart;however dear, however bright,the road we traveled on is gone.

AUTUMN - by Lisa K. Putnam

 

AUTUMN by Lisa K. Putnam Misty mornings, frosted lawnsThe wind is blowing a winter's song. Changing colors of the leaves,Slowly falling from the trees. Soon the trees will all be bare,Offering no shelter taken there. So gather up the summers harvest,For darker days are now upon us!

WELCOME FALL - by Enia

WELCOME  FALL by  Enia Fall has just begunAs summer endsThe color of the leaves gleaming in the sunJumping in leaves with friendsAs the tumble downForming a quilt on the groundHearing the crinkle as you jump inTwisting and turning in the airFeeling of the brisk air blow in your faceThe warm and delightful smell of grandma's pumpkin pieThis is fall.

 

THE ANEMONES - by Carl Ewald

 

1

“Peewit ! Peewit !” cried the lapwing, as he flew over the moss in the wood. “Dame Spring is coming! I can feel it in my legs and wings.”

When the new grass, which lay down below in the earth, heard this, it at once began to sprout and peeped out gaily between the old, yellow straw. For the grass is always in an immense hurry.

Now the anemones in between the trees had also heard the lapwing’s cry, but refused on any account to appear above the earth.

“You mustn’t believe the lapwing,” they whispered to one another. “He is a flighty customer, whom one can’t trust. He always comes too early and starts calling at once. No, we will wait quite quietly till the starling and the swallow come. They are sensible, sober people, who are not to be taken in and who know what they are about.”

And the starlings came.

They sat down on a twig outside their summer villa and looked about them.

“Too early, as usual,” said Mr. Starling. “Not a green leaf and not a fly, except an old tough one of last year, not worth opening one’s beak for.”

Mrs. Starling said nothing, but looked none too cheerful either.

“If we had only remained in our snug winter-quarters beyond the mountains!” said Mr. Starling. He was angry because his wife did not answer, for he was so cold that he thought a little discussion might do him good. “But it’s your fault, just as last year. You’re always in such a terrible hurry to go to the country.”

“If I’m in a hurry, I know the reason why,” said Mrs. Starling. “And it would be a shame for you if you didn’t know too, for they are your eggs as well as mine.”

“Heaven forbid!” replied Mr. Starling, indignantly. “When have I denied my family? Perhaps you expect me, over and above, to sing to you in the cold?”

“Yes, that I do!” said Mrs. Starling, in the tone which he could not resist.

He at once began to whistle as best he could. But, when Mrs. Starling had heard the first notes, she flapped her wings and pecked at him with her beak:

“Will you be quiet at once!” she screamed, angrily. “That sounds so dismal that it makes one quite melancholy. You’d better see to it that the anemones come out. I think it’s high time. And, besides, one always feels warmer when there are others shivering too.”

Now, as soon as the anemones had heard the starling’s first whistle, they carefully stuck their heads out of the ground. But they were still so tightly tucked up in their green wraps that one could hardly see them. They looked like green buds which might turn into anything.

“It’s too early,” they whispered. “It’s a shame for the starling to call us. There’s no one in the world left that one can trust.”

Then the swallow came:

“Tsee! Tsee!” he whistled and darted through the air on his long, pointed wings. “Out with you, you silly flowers! Can’t you see that Dame Spring has come?”

But the anemones had become careful. They just pushed their green wraps a little to one side and peeped out:

“One swallow does not make a summer,” they said. “Where is your wife? You have only come to see if it’s possible to live here and now you’re trying to take us in. But we are not so stupid as all that. We know that, if once we catch cold, we’re done for.”

“You’re a pack of poltroons,” said the swallow and sat down on the weathercock on the ranger’s roof and looked out over the landscape.

But the anemones stood and waited and were very cold. One or two of them, who could not control their impatience, cast off their wraps in the sun. The cold killed them at night and the story of their pitiful death went from flower to flower and aroused great consternation.

2

Then Dame Spring came, one delightfully mild and still night.

No one knows what she looks like, for no one has ever seen her. But all long for her and thank her and bless her. She goes through the wood and touches the flowers and the trees and they bud at once. She goes through the stables and unfastens the animals and lets them out into the field. She goes straight into men’s hearts and makes them glad. She makes it difficult for the best-behaved boy to sit still on his bench at school and occasions a terrible lot of mistakes in the exercise-books.

But she does not do this all at once. She attends to her business night after night and comes first to those who long for her most.

So it happened that, on the very night when she arrived, she went straight off to the anemones, who stood in their green wraps and could no longer curb their impatience.

And one, two, three! There they stood in newly-ironed white frocks and looked so fresh and pretty that the starlings sang their finest songs for sheer joy at the sight of them.

“Oh, how lovely it is here!” said the anemones. “How warm the sun is! And how the birds sing! It is a thousand times better than last year.”

But they say this every year, so it doesn’t count.

Now there were many others who went quite off their heads when they saw that the anemones were out. There was a schoolboy who wanted to have his summer holidays then and there and then there was the beech, who was most offended.

“Aren’t you coming to me soon, Dame Spring?” he said. “I am a much more important person than those silly anemones and really I can no longer control my buds.”

“I’m coming, I’m coming!” replied Dame Spring. “But you must give me a little time.”

She went on through the wood. And, at every step, more anemones appeared. They stood in thick bevies round the roots of the beech and bashfully bowed their round heads to the ground.

“Look up freely,” said Dame Spring, “and rejoice in heaven’s bright sun. Your lives are but short, so you must enjoy them while they last.”

The anemones did as she told them. They stretched themselves and spread their white petals to every side and drank as much sunshine as they could. They knocked their heads against one another and wound their stalks together and laughed and were constantly happy.

“Now I can wait no longer,” said the beech and came into leaf.

Leaf after leaf crept out of its green covering and spread out and fluttered in the wind. The whole green crown arched itself like a mighty roof above the ground.

“Good heavens, is it evening so soon?” asked the anemones, who thought that it had turned quite dark.

“No, it is death,” said Dame Spring. “Now you’re finished. It’s the same with you as with the best in this world. All must bud, blossom and die.”

“Die?” cried some of the small anemones. “Must we die yet?”

And some of the large anemones turned quite red in the face with anger and pride:

“We know all about it!” they said. “It’s the beech that’s killing us. He steals the sunshine for his own leaves and grudges us a single ray. He is a nasty, wicked thing.”

They stood and scolded and wept for some days. Then Dame Spring came for the last time through the wood. She had still the oaks and some other querulous old fellows to visit:

“Lie down nicely to sleep now in the ground,” she said to the anemones. “It is no use kicking against the pricks. Next year, I will come again and wake you to new life.”

And some of the anemones did as she told them. But others continued to stick their heads in the air and grew up so ugly and lanky that they were horrid to look at.

“Fie, for shame!” they cried to the beech-leaves. “It’s you that are killing us.”

But the beech shook his long boughs, so that the brown husks fell to the ground.

“Wait till the autumn, you little blockheads,” he said and laughed. “Then you’ll just see.”

The anemones could not understand what he meant. But, when they had stretched themselves as far as they could, they cracked in two and withered.

3

The summer was past and the farmer had carted his corn home from the field.

The wood was still green, but darker; and, in many places, yellow and red leaves appeared among the green ones. The sun was tired of his warm work during the summer and went early to bed.

At night, the winter stole through the trees to see if his time would soon come. When he found a flower, he kissed her politely and said:

“Well, well, are you there still? I am glad to see you. Stay where you are. I am a harmless old man and wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

But the flower shuddered with his kiss and the bright dew-drops that hung from her petals froze to ice at the same moment.

The winter went oftener and oftener through the wood. He breathed upon the leaves, so that they turned yellow, or upon the ground, so that it grew hard.

Even the anemones, who lay down below in the earth and waited for Dame Spring to come again as she had promised, could feel his breath and shuddered right down to their roots.

“Oh dear, how cold it is!” they said to one another. “How ever shall we last through the winter? We are sure to die before it is over.”

“Now my time has come,” said the winter. “Now I need no longer steal round like a thief in the night. From to-morrow I shall look everybody straight in the face and bite his nose and make his eyes run with tears.”

At night the storm broke loose.

“Let me see you make a clean sweep of things,” said the winter.

And the storm obeyed his orders. He tore howling through the wood and shook the branches so that they creaked and broke. Any that were at all decayed fell down and those that held on had to twist and turn to every side.

“Away with all that finery!” howled the storm and tore off the leaves. “This is no time to deck one’s self out. Soon there will be snow on the branches: that’s another story.”

All the leaves fell terrified to the ground, but the storm did not let them be in peace. He took them by the waist and waltzed with them over the field, high up in the air and into the wood again, swept them together into great heaps and scattered them once more to every side, just as the fit seized him.

Not until the morning did the storm grow weary and go down.

“Now you can have peace for this time,” he said. “I am going down till we have our spring-cleaning. Then we can have another dance, if there are any of you left by that time.”

And then the leaves went to rest and lay like a thick carpet over the whole earth.

The anemones felt that it had grown delightfully warm.

“I wonder if Dame Spring can have come yet?” they asked one another.

“I haven’t got my buds ready!” cried one of them.

“No more have I! No more have I!” exclaimed the others in chorus.

But one of them took courage and just peeped out above the ground.

“Good-morning!” cried the withered beech-leaves. “It’s rather too early, little missie: if only you don’t come to any harm!”

“Isn’t that Dame Spring?” asked the anemone.

“Not just yet,” replied the beech-leaves. “It’s we, the green leaves you were so angry with in the summer. Now we have lost our green color and have not much left to make a show of. We have enjoyed our youth and danced, I may tell you. And now we are lying here and protecting all the little flowers in the ground against the winter.”

“And meanwhile I am standing and freezing with my bare branches,” said the beech, crossly.

The anemones talked about it down in the earth and thought it very nice.

“Those dear beech-leaves!” they said.

“Mind you remember it next summer, when I come into leaf,” said the beech.

“We will, we will!” whispered the anemones.

For that sort of thing is promised; but the promise is never kept.