Gorgeous Indian-summer day in Portland; I had work up in the far northeast of Vancouver, Washington, monitoring infiltration tests though the lazy, sunny afternoon. Cool enough for crispness - the meadowgrass was white with frost when I arrived in the predawn - but warming to pleasantly shirtsleeve temperatures by afternoon. A light wind from the south bringing on it the dry tartness of fallen leaves, the sultry scent of woodsmoke, and the high, clear iciness of the late October sky.
It gave me time to sit on my tailgate, book neglected at my side, and just enjoy the beauty of the last of summer and the brief, bright autumn we pass through so quickly before the gray rains of winter begin.
XXXIX
When summer's end is nighing
And skies at evening cloud,
I muse on change and fortune
And all the feats I vowed
When I was young and proud.
The weathercock at sunset
Would lose the slanted ray,
And I would climb the beacon
That looked to Wales away
And saw the last of day.
From hill and cloud and heaven
The hues of evening died;
Night welled through lane and hollow
And hushed the countryside,
But I had youth and pride.
And I with earth and nightfall
In converse high would stand,
Late, till the west was ashen
And darkness hard at hand,
And the eye lost the land.
The year might age, and cloudy
The lessening day might close,
But air of other summers
Breathed from beyond the snows,
And I had hope of those.
They came and were and are not
And come no more anew;
And all the years and seasons
That ever can ensue
Must now be worse and few.
So here's an end of roaming
On eves when autumn nighs:
The ear too fondly listens
For summer's parting sighs,
And then the heart replies.
~A.E. Housman (Last Poems)
Showing posts with label autumn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label autumn. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Summer's End
The cool mornings and slanting light of evening are reminding me that our summer is drawing to a close.
Unlike the East Coast, this year Portland's summer has been brief, cool, and drizzly. We've had almost no hundred degree days, few of the brutal dog-mouth days that make you want to set in the shade and do nothing.
Now the nights will draw out, and clouds lour in, and the cold rains of autumn begin.
"For summer there, bear in mind, is a loitering gossip, that only begins to talk of leaving when September rises to go."
- George Washington Cable
Unlike the East Coast, this year Portland's summer has been brief, cool, and drizzly. We've had almost no hundred degree days, few of the brutal dog-mouth days that make you want to set in the shade and do nothing.
Now the nights will draw out, and clouds lour in, and the cold rains of autumn begin."For summer there, bear in mind, is a loitering gossip, that only begins to talk of leaving when September rises to go."
- George Washington Cable
Sunday, September 5, 2010
The last sunflowers
I was working my ass off, frankly, and so I didn't get to blog about the game at the Civic Sta - oh, sorry, PGE Park - last Thursday.
It was a terrific game; scoreless until the 83rd minute when Ryan Pore dove to meet terrific service from Doug DeMartin and headed it past the Puerto Rico keeper, the Boys made the goal stand up and the crowd of 15,000-some went home singing and happy.
But it was a poignant moment, too, as it was the last game in the old barn for the team that has played there since the first year of this decade. Next year the team will return, but as part of the highest U.S. division, Major League Soccer, and likely with many new names on the back of the jerseys. The players on the field Thursday night, many of them, were there for a reason. Many of them had tried, and failed, at the top flight.
In a sweet gesture many of the fans brought sunflowers and their formal dress to celebrate the end of summer, and the end of a meeting of place, people, and deeds we have treasured, both the good and the ill of, and will look back on with the sort of lingering goodwill we hold for things loved and lost, not through tragedy but merely though time and the rise and fall of tide.
There will be new joys, and new heartbreaks to come, and we will surely return to the new pitch and cheer the new players. But I didn't want to talk about that. That's for next season, and a new spring, and new hopes and dreams; the perennial hopes and dreams of all players, and all fans, and all people, at the outset of any endeavor.
No, this time I'm just thinking about the last bright golden sunflowers of the summer, and the happy farewell to much that I have loved and will not see again.
It was a terrific game; scoreless until the 83rd minute when Ryan Pore dove to meet terrific service from Doug DeMartin and headed it past the Puerto Rico keeper, the Boys made the goal stand up and the crowd of 15,000-some went home singing and happy.
But it was a poignant moment, too, as it was the last game in the old barn for the team that has played there since the first year of this decade. Next year the team will return, but as part of the highest U.S. division, Major League Soccer, and likely with many new names on the back of the jerseys. The players on the field Thursday night, many of them, were there for a reason. Many of them had tried, and failed, at the top flight.
In a sweet gesture many of the fans brought sunflowers and their formal dress to celebrate the end of summer, and the end of a meeting of place, people, and deeds we have treasured, both the good and the ill of, and will look back on with the sort of lingering goodwill we hold for things loved and lost, not through tragedy but merely though time and the rise and fall of tide.
There will be new joys, and new heartbreaks to come, and we will surely return to the new pitch and cheer the new players. But I didn't want to talk about that. That's for next season, and a new spring, and new hopes and dreams; the perennial hopes and dreams of all players, and all fans, and all people, at the outset of any endeavor. No, this time I'm just thinking about the last bright golden sunflowers of the summer, and the happy farewell to much that I have loved and will not see again.
September
"I have come to a still, but not a deep center, A point outside the glittering current;
My eyes stare at the bottom of a river,
At the irregular stones, iridescent sandgrains,
My mind moves in more than one place,
In a country half-land, half-water.
I am renewed by death, thought of my death,
The dry scent of a dying garden in September,
The wind fanning the ash of a low fire.
What I love is near at hand,
Always, in earth and air."
- Theodore Roethke, The Far Field
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