The Fall of October

‘Tell me about the seasons again, Grandpa! Tell me about Octember…”

“October – ah, that was a glorious month child.

A time when all the county celebrated the riches of the harvest,

The bushels of apples in every hue of gold and green and ruby red,

Some sweet as a nutribar, others sour until your Grandma baked them

Filled with raisins and honey from our own hives,

Where the drowsy bees settled in for the long cold snap,

Their dreams filled with syrupy sweetness.

October meant blustery winds that whipped the crisp leaves

From their trees and created whirls of orange, amber and rust

That fell in piles that the children played in.

We still had trees, and bees, back then.”

“Tell about the country fayre!”

“All the locals gathered together beneath wax canvas canopies

To share their good fortune with their neighbors.

Tables laden with leeks and potatoes, fat orange pumpkins

bigger than your breathing helmet,

So many that we couldn’t eat them all,

So we carved faces and placed candles inside –

Imagine, so many candles we could light them just for decoration!

Preserves and pickles and all kinds of jellies were proudly displayed,

Not hoarded for the dark months, but enjoyed all year around.

Such quilts you would see at the fayre! Sewn with all the colors of the rainbow

And designs of animals, flowers, all the beauty the world used to hold.”

“Tell about the hunting, Grandpa! And the white stag!”

“Oh, child, the hunting makes me sad now, sad that

We once took for granted all those majestic deer

And turkeys, pheasants, and geese besides.

My Pa and I, we’d hike up the mountain – yes this very one

We live beneath now.

Every year we’d go, second week in October,

And try to shoot the biggest stag of the season.

Stags had antlers, child, some as wide as your arms outstretched,

And the white stag, he was most majestic of them all,

An autumn miracle, how he’d lived so many years to reach

Such a grand size.”

“And did you shoot him, Grandpa?”

“I did not, child. Though my Pa scolded me for being so weak,

I’m still glad I chose life that day and not darkness.

What good would that rack of antlers be to me now,

Underground in a bunker where beauty never treads?

No, better to think of him still free and wild,

Roaming the world above, king of all he sees,

Even though it be wasteland and scorched earth.

Better to imagine its still October out there,

And we the drowsy bees, waiting, waiting for Spring to return again.”