Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, BEFORE WINTER, by FREDERICK R. MCCREARY


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

BEFORE WINTER, by                    
First Line: Long ago / the thunder went talking itself to the dark hills
Last Line: And darkness is peace.
Subject(s): Autumn; Seasons; Fall


Long ago
The thunder went talking itself to the dark hills,
Long ago
The green rows of peas went marching to a tiger lily sunset
While the crickets were sharpening their sickles
For the last of the late August moon.
Now hydrangea breasts hang full and low
To nourish more tenderly
Whatever of sunshine,
And the smell of bruised apples rises from the long rotted grass.

Those who come from the fields
Come with their arms overflowing,
And there sounds from the ripe barns
The restless paw of heavy hoofs,
As the smoky wind and the dusk
Go stabling the horses of summer.

Did autumn come with white lips
Sucking at a black beach where no one could listen?
Did she come in a moment neither night time nor day
Whirling red laughter about her,
Long ribbons of ivy leaves, crimson?
Did you see her a gray-shawled woman of the twilight
Seated in a crotch of the hills,
Supping from a half-empty cup?
Or was she a mother, goldenrod tucked in her hair,
Singing to a sunflower poking his head through the corn?
O whoever she is
And however she came
I love her.

I looked hours and hours
Into long golden wells of Indian summer.
I saw my face at the bottom
And staring, remembering,
I sudenly left them
To look at the moon.

For autumn is the sound of a door softly closing at dusk,
Of an old man's voice
Counting over and over again
The bushels he stores in the cellar,
The hush of a mother telling herself and her fire,
"Sarah, Thomas and Kate,
These are my children."

Then the curves of a scythe handle tempted my hands,
I grasped them.
And eargerly,
I reaped for the last time.
April, June and August,
I took what was left
And tied it in bundles for the winter.

The dark mistress of fall
Stands in her bare feet by the barn door
Holding a sickle in her hands.
I have helped her gather red apples,
Filling her apron,
And to slit the throats of fat swine;
I have helped her find the hoes and the rakes
And stacked them in a corner with the plow.
So she stands smiling,
Watching the swirl of the smoke mist,
The slow fall of leaves and the night.

I have helped her, but now I must turn from her, whispering,
"Mothers, knit and knit,
As you watch from your windows
The way of your children, their arms full of leaves,
Swaddling the rose bushes.
Barns, hunch your back to the north,
For your lady is going with her sickle
To beat on the cool door of the snow wind.
Pools, swallow all th stars that you can,
For the ice will come
And cover you over."

September, October, and November,
They are fearless,
So now while the smoulder of leaves in the ditches
With tongues of flame and fire
Utters words of autumn prayer,
Let you, my neighbor, and I,
Go through the silence of the tented evening corn.

Let us light a fire at the edge of the fields and the wood-side,
And let us stand round it watching the leap of the shadows,
Saying over and over to ourselves,
"This is our mother, our sky mother autumn,
Who brings shadows and eath all about us,
Who fills our hearts with the glory of dying
And soothes us with the promise of snow."
We thrust our hands into the memory of the night
And grasping the hands of our earth fathers, earth mothers,
They who were loyal,
We stand till the last flare and flicker yields to the darkness,
And darkness is peace.





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