Poetry Friday: Autumn and Gatsby and Crooker, Oh, My!

Well, apparently I have fallen down on a very important job. Every autumn, I weave this crisply perfect Fitzgerald quote:

"What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon?" cried Daisy, "and the day after that, and the next thirty years?"

"Don't be morbid," Jordan said. "Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall." 

                               ~~ The Great Gatsby  

into a post. And I haven't done it yet. I share it because autumn is my favorite season, and although I can't normally say I have anything in common with Jordan Baker, I do share the conviction that autumn will never fail to revive me from my annual summer wilting (and complaining.)

Now I have shared the requisite (but never unwelcome) autumn quote, and will move on to requisite, always-welcome fall poetry.

This week, I've got Barbara Crooker, being her completely marvelous, Crookery self:

And Now it’s October
by Barbara Crooker

the golden hour of the clock of the year. Everything that can run
to fruit has already done so: round apples, oval plums, bottom-heavy
pears, black walnuts and hickory nuts annealed in their shells,
the woodchuck with his overcoat of fat. Flowers that were once bright
....

(Read the whole poem here, at The Writer's Almanac.)

~~~~~

Speaking of marvelous selves, Jama Rattigan, Queen of Marvelous Selves, is hosting the Poetry Friday round up today at Alphabet Soup.

(Photo courtesy of FreeImages.com.)