Star Light, Star Bright

Under stars in late October cold

you asked, if stars are sun,

why is ours much bigger than the rest.

I said, because they're far away.

As far away as Grammy's house, you asked.

Farther still, I said, much farther. 

Where is Grammy now, you asked.

Her body's in the ground, I said,

but maybe what she really was is up there somewhere shining down

like starlight you and I can feel

all around us on a night like this.

You stood in silence for awhile

gazing up, one thoughtful hand

resting lightly on my shoulder,

one stretched out and turned palm up

as if to catch the starlight.

Then you said, almost singing

    what a pretty feeling

    to be a little star,

    white, and beautiful.

I could feel the whole heart of you

lifting dreams beyond the reach

of earthbound limitations and I

love you more than you will know

until I'm starlight and you understand

how each of us needs little stars

to lift our dreams beyond ourselves

and I was hers, and you were mine.

- W.D. Ehrhart

September has come, it is hers

Whose vitality leaps in the autumn,
Whose nature prefers
Trees without leaves and a fire in the fire-place;
So I give her this month and the next
Though the whole of my year should be hers who has
rendered already
So many of its days intolerable or perplexed
But so many more so happy;
Who has left a scent on my life and left my walls
Dancing over and over with her shadow,
Whose hair is twined in all my waterfalls
And all of London littered with remembered kisses.

- Louise MacNeice, from "Autumn"

Rain on roof outside window, gray light, deep covers and warm blankets. Rain and nip of autumn in air; nostalgia, itch to work better and bigger. That crisp edge of autumn.
- Sylvia Plath

If you’re reading this, if there’s air in your lungs on this November day, then there is still hope for you. Your story is still going. And maybe some things are true for all of us. Perhaps we all relate to pain. Perhaps we all relate to fear and loss and questions. And perhaps we all deserve to be honest, all deserve whatever help we need. Our stories are all so many things: Heavy and light. Beautiful and difficult. Hopeful and uncertain. But our stories aren’t finished yet. There is still time, for things to heal and change and grow. There is still time to be surprised. We are still going, you and I. We are stories still going.
- Jamie Tworkowski

The falling leaves drift by the window
The autumn leaves of red and gold
I see your lips, the summer kisses
The sun-burned hands I used to hold

Since you went away the days grow long
And soon I'll hear old winter's song
But I miss you most of all my darling
When autumn leaves start to fall
- Nat King Cole

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depths of some devine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

- Alfred Lord Tennyson

The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry's cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.
The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I'll put a trinket on.
- Emily Dickinson

This was one of those perfect New England days in late summer where the spirit of autumn takes a first stealing flight, like a spy, through the ripening country-side, and, with feigned sympathy for those who droop with August heat, puts her cool cloak of bracing air about leaf and flower and human shoulders.

- Sarah Orne Jewett

Bittersweet October. The mellow, messy, leaf-kicking, perfect pause between the opposing miseries of summer and winter.
- Carol Bishop Hipps

Autumn, the year's last, loveliest smile.
- William Cullen Bryant

who are you, little i
(five or six years old)
peering from some high
window; at the gold
of november sunset
(and feeling:that if day
has to become night
this is a beautiful way)
- e.e cummings