My ode to autumn

For a few nerdy weeks between my junior and senior years of high school, I attended a Latin camp at Kansas University. I probably learned some Latin, but the big draw was being on a university campus several hours from home, surrounded by other nerdy kids. In other words, it was a trial run at leaving home for college.

One of our teachers taught us a wonderful game. On Friday afternoons, he would give us the first lines of a few famous poems and challenge us to write a new second line. As an example, he recited the first stanza of a poem by Herrick: “Whenas in silks my Julia goes, / Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows / The liquefaction of her clothes! / Next, when I cast mine eyes and see / That brave vibration each way free, /—O how that glittering taketh me!”

This was titillating stuff for a high school student from the Midwest. Yes, I was reading Portnoy’s Complaint on my own that summer, but in classes, any glimmer of sexual desire in our assigned books was promptly followed by a woman’s seduction, pregnancy, ruin, and (usually) death. The novelty of The Scarlet Letter for me was that Hester didn’t die. Yes, she wore that ridiculous scarlet A for the rest of her life, but it was the man who died. How refreshing!

My teacher’s example of rewriting was, “Whenas in silks my Julia goes, / The outline of her girdle shows.” (So 1960s! That summer, I would have rejoiced to learn that I would rarely have to wear a dress once I grew up and never a girdle.) As his example suggests, the game was best played as comic and ironic parody, deflating romantic (or Romantic) sentiments. I don’t remember what lines we students came up with, but however bad they may have been, the exercise sent us combing through books of traditional verse. And we had fun.

When I married Michael, I married a man who rewrites song lyrics to fit whatever occasion presents itself. As an example, for years, we took the kids down to Florida to visit his parents for school vacation week. On the way to the airport, we always sang (to the “Toreador” melody from Bizet’s Carmen), “Let’s go to Florida, / the weather here is horrida / It will be torrida / Down there in Florida.” (As the kids got older, Michael and I enjoyed singing it as they protested and cringed in the back seat.)

So, as I was bicycling along the road the other day, enjoying the fresh air of late September, I thought about the poetry of autumn. Keats’ “Ode to Autumn” begins like this:

   Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

   Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

   Conspiring with him how to load and bless

   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

   To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,

   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

   To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

   And still more, later flowers for the bees,

   Until they think warm days will never cease…

We do have apple trees all around us, and they are indeed bending with apples these days, their shiny fruit filled with ripeness to the core. And the fall asters have stayed vibrant, lively with bees, their purple flowers contrasting prettily with the tiny red rosehips of the wild roses that bloom everywhere.

Even so, my version would probably emphasize indoor pleasures, too. It would start something like this: “Season of tea and reading by the fire, / Of long, hot baths once long, fresh walks are done…” It would include pumpkin pie, trees blazing scarlet and gold in late afternoon sunshine, the smell of apple crisp baking, and the return of sweaters. Since the sun sets earlier and earlier these days, it should include my sunlamp, too (to offset a mild case of Seasonal Affective Disorder). Also Nextflix.

And you, my friends, what are your autumn pleasures and rituals?