'Again, Great Season'

Like the rest of us, poets often favor certain times of the year. They return to a season or month they find thematically or emotionally rich. Keats, obviously, was an autumn man. Winter I associate with Thomas Hardy and Robert Frost. Howard Nemerov sub-specialized in autumn blurring into winter. In the North, that signifies October, with early echoes, some years, in September. At that time, out in the fields, the golden rod is tall and turning brown. The goldfinches are busy harvesting thistle seeds. The asters grow dense and bend to the ground. They will survive until after the first snow. I can remember snow falling on my birthday, October 26, when I was a kid in Cleveland. Here is Nemerov’s “Again” (The Western Approaches, 1975): “Again, great season, sing it through again Before we fall asleep, sing the slow change That makes October burn out red and gold And color bleed into the world and die, And butterflies among the fluttering leaves Disguise themselves until the few last…