Blessings of Mabon to you, may your harvest be a good one and may the things you let go bring space for new.
Autumn is well and truly on us now, cold damp mornings and the light nights are gone. Last night we needed lights on at 7pm.
at one time the thought of Winter used to fill me with despair. The loss of the light and the warmth.
Eventually I realised how beneficial the dark half of the year was. A time to take stock, to appreciate the harvest received from the years efforts. We need the dark half of the year for balance.
There are days mind when I long for the sun and the heat of summer. When everything aches and even standing is wearisome there are thoughts of summer days.
There are several Autumn poems I love.
This first from William Blake:-
To Autumn
O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stained
With the blood of the grape, pass not,
but sit
Beneath my shady roof, there thou may'st rest,
And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe;
And all the daughters of the year shall dance,
Sing now the lusty song of fruits and flowers.
and the well known one from John Keats:-
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
After Apple Picking
by Robert Frost
My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still.
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples; I am drowsing off.
I cannot shake the shimmer from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the water-trough,
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and reappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
And I keep hearing from the cellar-bin
That rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking; I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall,
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised, or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.
An Autumn Greeting
"Come," said the Wind to the Leaves
one day.
"Come over the meadow and we will play.
Put on
your dresses of red and gold.
For summer is gone and the days
grow cold
The colour and mood of the garden is changing now also. The Acer's leaves glow red in the sunshine and even at dusk have an otherworldly look to them
I have a ritual for Autumn Equinox. I use it as a time to let go of unwanted stuff. Not just physical but spiritually. I let go and send it on its way.
This is a mixed harvest this year, not all good but even the bad or negative things will have a positive side. We learn from and progress from all aspects of our life. Sometimes we wonder why it happens but there has to be a reason.
As part of my ritual I send out positive energy to the world to be used where the Goddess sees fit.
I wish you all you wish yourself. Remember if you send out positivity you receive it back. But the balance of life states that this applies to negativity also. Be careful what you wish for.
