Autumn Memories

Welcome all  Anything Autumn members and anyone who should find this poem.

"For man, autumn is a time of harvest, of gathering together.  For nature, it is a time of sowing, of scattering abroad."

Edwin WayTeale

Autumn Memories (Sestina)

There’s nothing so spectacular as the changing of leaves!
Mother Nature doesn’t stop there—filling the air with sweet scents
As days go by, falling leaves add to the romantic sounds
Autumn has it’s own mythology for people not living in Fall
My son now lives in the locale of the single season
I’m grateful that he’ll always have Pacific Northwest memories

Many of us create false memories
of scuffing through crispy, dry piles of leaves
during the leaf falling season
if we grew up with only evergreen scents
where there can be no true Fall
as crazy as that sounds

In the city we no longer can have bonfire sounds
Will words like bonfire fade from humanity’s memory?
In California, wildfire season is the new Fall
Every year somebody drops a burning cig and then leaves
And people lose their homes and everything is filled with smoke scents
Here in the Northwest fall is being replaced by flood season

I try to make the most of each autumn season
listening to college football sounds
sniffing  pumpkin, leaves, and cider scents
creating and capturing new memories
pressing them between the leaves
of an old book so later, out they fall

I think my own life is moving into its Fall
We’re in the pre-grandparent season
But we’re in the part where the kid leaves
thankfully there are kids next door for when we crave those sounds
It seems like yesterday ours was that age; now we only have memories
Next to the smells of autumn – baby scents

memories waft up like familiar scents
and then they lightly Fall
onto other piles of memories
from all the other seasons
the piles muffle the sounds
and the caretaker in my brain leaves

There are powerful scents in each of the four seasons
I just saw a leaf Falling; its passing drowned out by other sounds
I want to rake up of all my memories and jump into them like a pile of leaves

© Susan K. Barton 2009

This is written in response to Kim’s Thursday Writing Essentials at Gather Essentials:Writing –Autumn

If you liked this story, you might like to read some of my other stories which you can find by clicking on this link. prompt for 9/10/09