Happy Halloween!

Gilbert Gaul, His nephew, ca. 1890-1900

The Labors of October

autumn leaves....

Song of Autumn [click]

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Song Of Autumn by Paul Verlaine

trans. James Kirkup (each verse as haiku)

Long moans on autumn's

saxophones - wound my heart with

languor's monotones

Wan suffocations -

as hours creep - remembering

days gone by - I weep -

Borne on weary winds,

my grief - hither and thither -

a withering leaf

Philip Levine, Current U. S. Poet Laureate

Fact is, silence is the perfect water:
unlike rain it falls from no clouds
to wash our minds, to ease our tired eyes,
to give heart to the thin blades of grass
fighting through the concrete for even air
dirtied by our endless stream of words.

from, “He Would Never Use One Word Where None Would Do” 

October's stone is the Opal...

October's flower is the Calendula...

And the Child cared nothing about the Looking-Glass . . .

Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio

In the Shreve High football stadium,

I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,

And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood,

And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,

Dreaming of heroes.

All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home.

Their women cluck like starved pullets,

Dying for love.

Therefore,

Their sons grow suicidally beautiful

At the beginning of October,

And gallop terribly against each other's bodies.

James Wright, poet

Steve Jobs died today at age 56 . . .

©Mark Chaddock

Macclesfield, Cheshire, England

Fire in the lake: the image of REVOLUTION.

Thus the superior man

Sets the calendar in order

And makes the seasons clear.

Fire below and the lake above combat and destroy each other. So too in the course of the year a combat takes place between the forces of light and the forces of darkness, eventuating in the revolution of the seasons, and man is able to adjust himself in advance to the demands of the different times.