“Fall in California” was written in October 2005, at the beginning of my freshman year at Caltech. I think my main motivation for writing it was likely homesickness—that was a rather unpleasant semester much of the time—but it was also a result of my realizing just how much fall weather matters to me as I spent my first winter in a climate where it never really gets cold.
I’m a little surprised to find that this poem is in iambic pentameter. Around the end of high school I started to prefer to write non-rhymed iambic poetry, but I usually ended up with iambic tetrameter for some reason.
“Fall in California”
October 2005 in Pasadena, California
There is a falsehood in the endless green,
a lie of life’s eternal victory:
for Samhain1 comes despite the leaves of green
and seasons turn among the stars above.
I feel the days are growing shorter now,
I feel the coming of the winter’s night:
and though no autumn breezes chill the air,
I cannot help but feel the winter’s breath.
Though warm and cloudless march the autumn days,
I know the year is waning fast at home:
I see the autumn colors that aren’t here,
I feel the autumn winds that do not blow.
Each year in autumn ages, days grow short
’til Yuletide brings the new year’s birth again:
and I must keep the autumn in my heart
for here the summer never seems to die.
There is a falsehood in the endless green,
a lie of life’s eternal victory:
for Samhain comes despite the leaves of green
and seasons turn among the stars above.
______________
Footnotes:
1 Samhain was a Gaelic holiday celebrated around the start of November, now often celebrated by neopagans in association with Halloween.