Timely for evoking autumn colors, and timeless for its existential wit, a reading by Rob Farnsworth, senior lecturer in English, of his poem “Toward Hallowe’en,” illustrated by Bates photography.
Toward Hallowe’en
I woke in painted stillness and stepped
out on the porch. The silted altitudes were
motionless, and although it hadn’t rained,
the light was melancholy, damp, made
for still black boughs and brilliant leaves.
One of those days that deserves its very
own name: Latin for air-without-motive,
autumn-holding-steady. I stared into
the trees, as a child looks into a picture
said to contain a tiger’s smile, a five-
pointed star, a domino, a hand — when with
a sound like distant applause (fainter
than the softball crowds who had rejoiced
all summer beyond the trees), one whole
maple’s wild red leaves poured down
across the street. No wind, no bird, no
squirrel, just a steady shower of leaves
from a stolid tree, so sudden and unanimous
it seemed deliberate. Standing there,
my arms embossed with bedding wrinkles,
I was pierced with recognition acute
and inexplicable as the sweet, focused
ache a finger held inches from my forehead
provokes. I didn’t know why — but that
was joy — release from having to stitch
effect to cause, from having to name each
five-fingered leaf or separate day. They
would fall away in good time, from places
in a picture of the past, into a hushed,
mysterious storm of bright red leaves.
“Toward Hallowe’en” first appeared in Robert Farnsworth’s book Honest Water, published by Wesleyan University Press in 1989. Farnsworth is a senior lecturer in English at Bates.
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