sad news

One day long ago in my college English class, my professor, Cal Huenneman, remarked that any time he saw weather like that day, he had the immediate rush of the lines of a poem, October's Bright Blue Weather, by Helen Hunt Jackson. Then, in typical college professor style, he quoted the poem from memory, his head thrown back and his eyes shut... smiling. I was a junior then, in 1974.... and I'd never heard the poem, the phrase, .... never felt the rush of a poem through my heart as I looked at something. Now I often get those rushes although I teach high school so I refrain from the quote thing... (eyes would roll SO bad we'd probably need the 911 Opthamologist)... But here goes...

Mom and took a drive from New Cambria north to Kirksville through the countryside... Our eyes were blessed.... O suns and skies and clouds of June,

And flowers of June together,
Ye cannot rival for one hour

October's bright blue weather;
When loud the bumblebee makes haste,

Belated, thriftless vagrant,

And goldenrod is dying fast,
And lanes with grapes are fragrant;

When gentians roll their fingers tight

To save them for the morning,

And chestnuts fall from satin burrs

Without a sound of warning;

When on the ground red apples lie

In piles like jewels shining,

And redder still on old stone walls

Are leaves of woodbine twining;

When all the lovely wayside things

Their white-winged seeds are sowing,

And in the fields still green and fair,

Late aftermaths are growing;

When springs run low, and on the brooks,

In idle golden freighting,

Bright leaves sink noiseless in the hush

Of woods, for winter waiting;

When comrades seek sweet country haunts,

By twos and twos together,

And count like misers, hour by hour,

October's bright blue weather.

O sun and skies and flowers of June,

Count all your boasts together,

Love loveth best of all the year

October's bright blue weather

Helen Hunt Jackson