The First Day Of Fall…Like It Or Not (A poem)

When I was a freshman at Brown University, way back in the early ’70s, I had to listen to recordings of the entire Shakespearean history cycle for a senior seminar that I took first semester freshman year. (Don’t laugh; in those days Brown was pass/fail on everything and qualifying requirements for taking upper-level classes were virtually nonexistent.)

An entire day in “The Rock” (Rockefeller Library), open to close, immersing myself in Richardson, Olivier and Gielgud left me with a permanent ability to flip the iambic pentameter on at will.

A year or so ago, a first day of autumn had much warmer than normal temperatures, as if Summer was hanging onto the doorframe of Seasonal Change with a death-grip, and Autumn stood there, patient but inexorable, saying “when you’re done.”

And my instant iambic button got pushed.

The summer, unimpressed by Autumn’s song

Clings desperately to one last afternoon

And brings a deluge thundering o’er the lawn

Ignoring that the equinox is soon

To cast it out. The leaves of oak and elm

Have scarlet turned, and gold, to mark the end

Of growth and glory. Frost will take the helm

And touch the earth, the message clear to send

That winter watches fast by autumn’s shoulder

And waits to make its entrance when it’s colder.