October (Coates version)

October is a luminous meditation on autumn's brief and haunting beauty. Florence Earle Coates, the unanimous poet laureate of Pennsylvania, writes with precise observation and quiet reverence as she traces the season's transition: the falling leaves, the lengthening shadows, the particular quality of light that makes October feel both generous and farewell-like. This is nature poetry that refuses to be merely descriptive Coates finds in October's decay something like dignity, something like grace. The poem moves with careful cadence, its traditional form containing what might otherwise escape. For readers who have ever stood in an autumn grove and felt time moving through them, this poem offers language for that sensation. It is compact only in length; in emotional register, it is expansive. A small masterpiece of American nature poetry, worth returning to each fall.