A few poems for fall
Poetry celebrating fall leaves and a little bit of spookiness
Hi friends,
It’s been a busy season for me, and it’s only going to get busier leading into the holiday season. Just for the last few days of October I have a novel draft to complete, a few more days of Inktober, an illustration to finish, a client manuscript to critique, and two newsletters to publish. I’m also helping to organize and lead a conference at church, creating a work of art for advent season (also for church), and planning a full day school visit in a couple of weeks. That’s just through the middle of November.
I’ve got a few drafts for several upcoming newsletters, but none of them are quite polished yet, and so for this week I decided to take it easy on myself and share some poetry for fall. I love fall, and I’m blessed to live in a place where this season puts on quite a show, so this season has inspired many poems over the years. I hope you enjoy these poems.
Of course I have to include a haiku, one of my favorite non-rhyming poetic forms.
Haiku
colorful leaves drift
streaming bits of confetti—
fall’s celebration
Something cute for the kids and kids at heart. This poem was published in Wee Ones, an online children’s magazine that closed its doors many years ago. They were one of the first places to publish my children’s poetry.
Leafy Fun
The yard’s full of leaves
There’s work to be done
I know just the thing that will make this chore fun
I’ll put on a sweater
I’ll grab me a rake
Just a few minutes is all it will take
Some rustling swishes
I’ll rake for a while
‘Til all of those leaves are in one great big pile
And then you know what?
I’ll take a great leap
And land on my rump in the big leafy heap
The leaves will all scatter
I’ll get up and then
I’ll gladly start raking all over again!
I wrote the following poem for a poetry challenge about fifteen years ago. It’s the first roundel I’ve ever written. According to Paul Janeczko in A Kick in the Head: An Everyday Guide to Poetic Forms, a roundel is this:
"a three-stanza poem of 11 lines. The stanzas have four, three, and four lines in them and a rhyme scheme of abab bab abab. Ah, but there's more. Line 4 is repeated as line 11 -- not an easy trick!"
Not an easy trick indeed. But I love a challenge, and I loved writing this poem, and I’m happy to share it with you.
An Autumn Roundel
I saw a flock of leaves take wing
as a gust of wind went whistling by,
the startled leaves left, scattering
like birds against a concrete sky.
I smiled when I saw them fly,
such fluid movement, crackling
with fall's decay, now crisp and dry.
The breeze then took them, frolicking.
In a swirling dance, they said goodbye,
gone, again, until the spring
like birds against a concrete sky.
And one more in honor of spooky season. I enjoy a little spook, and I get a kick out of reading and writing spooky poems. One of my favorites to read (or recite) is The Troll by Jack Prelutsky. I don’t know that this poem quite reaches The Troll’s level of brilliant spookiness, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.
Beware!
If you take one step upon
the spooky basement stair,
I cannot say that it won’t
grasp your leg or snag your hair.
And if you take that daring step
no one here can say
if you’ll be caught and kept in chains
or if you’ll get away.
If you descend and reach the end—
the bottom of the stair—
what will be waiting?
I can’t say. But, if you go…
…beware!
Inktober is nearing an end. Here’s week four of my tiny stamps:
The stamps have gotten bigger over the month because the project has gotten bigger. As my character has explored, I’ve needed more room to tell his story. But each of these stamps is still smaller than 2x2 inches!
If you’re new here or you’ve missed a few newsletters, you can read about my Inktober project here:
Check out my two previous newsletters to see my Inktober stamps from week two and week three.
If you’d like to see some of my art in an actual book, check out my illustrated middle grade novel, Mari in the Margins, a story told in poems, doodles, and art journal pages!
I love this! Your Inktober's were incredible! I subbed one day this month for a middle school art class and the teacher had them following the prompts. I showed them all your work.
I loved the poetry! And those stamps are amazing and look like a lot of work! I looked back at several posts showing your stamps and I'm so impressed. Wow!