I’ve spent the last few days taking down the garden, cutting back the ranks of shasta daisies and phlox that stood sentinel all summer over the more free-spirited orders of pulmonaria, anemone, and bleeding heart. They’re mostly stubble now, except for a few stands of echinacea that I left for the birds to finish off. It was cold work. But satisfying, too, harking back to the age-old practice of bringing in the sheaves. As the leaves fall, the contours of the mountain we face take shape again — an enormous iceberg emerging from the fog. We’re getting back down to the essentials, and soon we’ll be surrounded by the monotones of winter.
“Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones,” lines from the American poet Elinor Wylie, kept drifting through my mind as I worked. She was a contemporary of the far more famous Edna St. Vincent Millay, also beautiful and tempestuous, but dying young and leaving behind a scandal-scarred life and eight novels and books of poetry. Most seem archaic now, but this poem (here are the first and final verses) from her most successful book Nets to Catch the Wind, still resonates.
Wild Peaches
by Elinor Wylie
1
When the world turns completely upside down
You say we’ll emigrate to the Eastern Shore
Aboard a river-boat from Baltimore;
We’ll live among wild peach trees, miles from town,
You’ll wear a coonskin cap, and I a gown
Homespun, dyed butternut’s dark gold colour.
Lost, like your lotus-eating ancestor,
We’ll swim in milk and honey till we drown.
The winter will be short, the summer long,
The autumn amber-hued, sunny and hot,
Tasting of cider and of scuppernong;
All seasons sweet, but autumn best of all.
The squirrels in their silver fur will fall
Like falling leaves, like fruit, before your shot.
4
Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones
There’s something in this richness that I hate.
I love the look, austere, immaculate,
Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones.
There’s something in my very blood that owns
Bare hills, cold silver on a sky of slate,
A thread of water, churned to milky spate
Streaming through slanted pastures fenced with stones.
I love those skies, thin blue or snowy gray,
Those fields sparse-planted, rendering meagre sheaves;
That spring, briefer than apple-blossom’s breath,
Summer, so much too beautiful to stay,
Swift autumn, like a bonfire of leaves,
And sleepy winter, like the sleep of death.
Thank goodness..I thought with all the work you have put in to “putting down the garden”, I would miss not having your thoughts about my favorite month of the year!
But you did not fail, once again: the lovely poem you selected was just right.
I went back to other Octobers in your file and found them and enjoyed them too.
Thank you so much
Thank you, Annette! I’m touched that you went back and read earlier October pieces. It still feels Octoberish out there — hoping it holds for a while longer.
October…my favorite month. I had not read that poem in a very long time. It captures much for me.
It’s such a resonant poem — I think she was a master of the sonnet form.
Love this, Liza.
I love the look, austere, immaculate,
Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones.
There’s something in my very blood that owns
Bare hills, cold silver on a sky of slate,
A thread of water, churned to milky spate
Streaming through slanted pastures fenced with stones.
Me, too!
Dearest Liza,
Fabulous piece of poetry, always amazed how you come up with the perfect selection.
Beata
I generally let the poem inspire the piece, Beata. That’s my secret.
Lovely as always. Who took amazing photo??
Thanks, Bucky. I take the photos with my trusty little iPhone.
Right on!
Thanks, Phyllis!