It’s late October and a lot has happened since my last blog post back in January – and that’s pretty much the reason for the lack of blog posts!  In April I said goodbye to Australia and hello to Canada!  The amount of work involved in moving from one country to another cannot be underestimated – especially paperwork.  However, here I am now in Canada and loving it and I’m absolutely relishing my first autumn in six years.

Admittedly, there can be fewer places in the world more spectacular than the east coast of Canada in autumn, or Fall as they call it around here, and I am lucky to live in an older neighbourhood which is full of mature trees. During my daily walks I am surrounded by the golds, greens and reds of the native woodlands and my soul is soothed by the dance-like flutter of colours to the welcoming ground.

As my eye is drawn to the leaves at my feet I am struck by how different each one is – each leaf is its own unique combination of colour, shade and light. I’m fascinated how the same tree produces leaves of such varying hues but of course, despite coming from the same tree, each leaf’s story is different much like that of human beings.

Autumn, for me, is the season that asks us to consider perspectives, to have a look at life from another angle or at least consider that another perspective exists.

It’s one of the reasons I love this poem by Robert Frost.  It speaks of autumn and how his guest adores it and its stark beauty but she believes he doesn’t love it as much as her.  It addresses his guest’s perspective and her perception of him and in a subconscious manner his perspective of her.  In the end he concludes that despite his own love of “bare November days” she brings even greater enrichment of them with her praise as if it were a part of the autumnal landscape itself.

My November Guest

My Sorrow, when she’s here with me

Thinks these dark days of autumn rain

Are beautiful as days can be;

She loves the bare, the withered tree;

She walked the sodden pasture lane.

 

Her pleasure will not let me stay.

She talks and I am fain to list:

She’s glad the birds are gone away,

She’s glad her simple worsted gray

Is silver now with clinging mist.

 

The desolate, deserted trees,

The faded earth, the heavy sky,

The beauties she so truly sees,

She thinks I have no eye for these,

And vexes me for reason why.

 

Not yesterday I learned to know

The love of bare November days

Before the coming of the snow,

But it were vain to tell her so,

And they are better for her praise.

 

Robert Frost