Autumn Playlist

If you were given a season for yourself,  what you do with it? What would you name it? Where would you take it? What foods would you feed it, and what scents would it produce? While we might not have a season to our self, take this day or the next or whenever you may, and name it. This is a playlist for that day, for the triumph of your only charge being yourself. 

Created and Written by River Wharton 

 Thoughts for an Autumn Day, with Selections from the Second Stanza of Wallace Steven’s “Sunday Morning”.

Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?

Summer nourishments sustain the autumn harvest. How else could we survive the coming cold? Put away your threadbare shoes, spent on hot cement. Unpack your layered boots. Don your warmest down. Weigh the winter whiskey, one finger or two. Watch the willow lose her leaves. 

Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?

How many trails are forgotten? What giants now roam the hills? Once, I saw one wake from slumbering with thunder ‘round its head. After harvest, light your candles, gather family, and give thanks. Lock your doors to the chill. Winter is knocking from the north. Our moods must tend toward the tranquil; scrape away your summer skin and relent.

Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;

The trees in neighboring woods bend with the wind, they stretch and lean. Their darker corners, what are they for? Beds for hibernating mammals. For us, Autumn is for seeds in your pocket, gatherings of wool blankets, nests of sticks and bones, heather on your gloves, herbs and spices, feather and bone; all wrapped around our shivering skins.

All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measures destined for her soul.