Hands down, fall is the BEST season. So, for a while now I’ve been working myself up to write a poem about it. I have about two dozen of these, but most of them don’t do the season justice. Like, not remotely.
There I was, scribbling notes, and sitting outside, trying to trap all the thoughts I had about this season into word-cages to share and describe what I felt. I stared at the leaves falling and the wind blowing, and I listened to the breezes coming through the trees (anticipating when they hit me), and just nothing came to me.
I thought, “It’s so hard to describe this. I can’t even explain autumn to people who have seen fall and know what it’s like — much less people who are blind or deaf and can’t experience it like I can.”
Then, the proverbial lightbulb went off. And here is the result. Enjoy.
How can you capture this season in poems?
How can you trap these emotions on a page?
How do you seal up a mem’ry in a bottle?
Or how do you write down sensations of change?
No words are sufficient to convey what I mean
When the flames intersperse with six shades of green.
How can I explain the distinct backwards climb
Of countless leaves – to the uninformed blind?
The deaf shall not hear what I cannot tell:
How the incoming wind causes leaf-piles to swell.
I wish I could share this with those who don’t know,
With the ones who miss out on this annual show.
But it’s so unlike everything, and it’s deeper than I,
Like the cosmos is deeper and darker than sky.
A scene is comprised of miniscule parts,
And together they awe me when seen from afar.
Those who don’t know it cannot understand,
And I can’t explain it, though I’m trying again.
Even I, who can see it, cannot comprehend
Shifting and changing, beginning and end.
Even I, who can hear it, can’t pretend to discern
The aching and breaking, the freeze and the burn.
Poems are just words with strings to my soul.
But all I ever write is a part of a whole.
I can’t say why this season holds so much allure,
And I can’t describe it – I know that for sure.
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Original poem by Kimba. Copyright 2017.
