20 Years of Literary Mama: Fall
It’s coming: the cooling morning air of autumn and the turning of leaves. Although fall has become a busy season of events. including football games, hayrides, and pumpkin picking, it is also a time of gradual slowing down, the portal to winter’s quiet stillness. Literary Mama contributors have explored this season over the last 20 years, and we’re happy to share some of those pieces with you.
A Geometry of Falling | Poetry Jan 2017 | Wendy Vergoz
Some say pomegranate but I say
apple, Eve’s tempter,now thurifer of Autumn air.
The wind coaxesCortland branches to drop
their cider-bound load.Shadows toss their lanky limbs
upon the vesper earth.Barn swallows skim the ground
and rise again, skim and rise,the rapid gradient
of their flightalmost a stumble.
Fall Mind | Mama in the Middle Nov 2005 | Sybil Lockhart
The popular idea that this muggy Indian Summer weather brings earthquakes persists no matter how often seismologists refute it. There is no correlation between the weather and the quake, but like many of my Bay Area neighbors, this lady probably remembers Loma Prieta, the temblor that tore through town along the San Andreas Fault one similar fall day 16 years ago, collapsing bridges and freeway overpasses. A big quake shakes her one October and subconsciously she connects the dots, her human mind expertly using correlation to put her world in order.
My daughter, four, confronts autumn and all its contradictions | Poetry July 2009 | Siam Griffiths
The tree over there is a skeleton tree. It has no leaves. Leaves are skeletons, and trees are skeletons. Empty trees are full of nests.
When a leaf falls, it dies. The falling is a dying. It dies and it dries and it dies. The skeleton isn’t buried. The skeleton of a leaf blows in the wind around the skeleton of the tree and dances into crumbling.
The wind dances, but you can’t see it. It dances too fast to see. When it gets tired, it stops to catch its breath. No person can catch its breath; hands aren’t fast enough.
Field of Dreams | Finding Magic Mountain June 2006 | Carol Zapata-Whelan
It was a warm October evening in the Valley, and we were watching our red and blue high school marching band line up on the edge of the field, waiting patiently for the football players to jog away and the cheerleaders to hop off their stands. The digital billboard marked halftime, the flag girls finally advanced, and we heard the vigorous drums, the white tuba, and the endearing flat notes from the brass. Vincent was a junior, and he looked intense on his trumpet, concentrating on choreography. Lucas was a freshman in his first field show. He had most of his attention on the saxophone he had just learned to play.
The Season of Tiny Yellow Leaves | Fiction October 2007 | Susan Wickstrom
The November drizzle turned into a biting spit. Marshall wanted to kick himself for being there. Monday was usually his day off with Pauline; they should be cuddled up on the couch, taking a nap. On the occasional Mondays when she drove the 50 miles up to Portland for the day, he liked to sleep late, work hard in the yard, then kick back, have a few cold ones and watch the game on TV. He had been right in the middle of burying some garlic bulbs when his best friend Larry called from some meeting that wouldn’t end, begging him to officiate the 3:30 match. Marshall had agreed. With Pauline in the city, he couldn’t think of an excuse not to help out. But he was hating it at the moment. And he greatly preferred soccer moms over football dads any day of the week.