Shift II

By Susan Swain Tabor

So many choices
Hear fall’s voices

Blooms are falling
Change is calling

Summer’s echo
Repeats ‘let go’

Look around
Beauty abounds

Harvest season
Mighty pleasing

Frosty fields
Pumpkin yields

Snappy air
County fairs

Apples crispy
Horses frisky

Trees ablaze
Colors amaze

Leaves are falling
Rakes are calling

Look to the sky
Then decide

Slanting sun rays
Shortening days

Fall is knocking
Watch birds flocking

Bird migrations
Shifting intimations

Feeling colder
Growing older

Wood burning season
Excites the reason

Books are pleading
Begin reading

Sit by the fire
Intellectually inquire

Smell crackling wood
Change is good

So many choices
Loud are fall’s voices

Susan Swain Tabor

Susan Swain Tabor is the great-granddaughter of Leonard Swain, Central’s first minister. She is currently writing his biography. Shiftwas inspired when she took a trip to Tiverton’s Fogland Beach with a dear friend after the fall solstice. It was a hot day in Providence, but at Fogland, a world away, the air was cool, moist, and the sea frothy in the strong west wind. The sky was the color of lead. Her friend remarked it was a magical day when summer and fall intersected. Upon returning home, Susan became obsessed with rhyming couplets about fall. Compelled by some mysterious force, over the course of a few days in various settings, she jotted down on sundry sheaves of notepaper leaves scattered all over the house the whimsical rhymes jingling inside her head. She then gathered them up and assembled the jigsaw of couplets naming them Shift.