August (my least favorite month of the year) has finally come to a close.  While the days are still warm and the autumn mist has not yet set in, as far as I am concerned, we have entered my favorite season: fall.

As the seasons change my reading tastes tend to shift a little.  Usually this time of year I am drawn to long stories, thick books that I can get lost in for weeks; but this time I am craving poetry.  I have been scouring my bookshelves for my books of poetry and reading old favorites again and again.

The poem I come back to almost every time I open a particular book is perhaps my all time favorite poem by Emily Dickinson: If You Were Coming in the Fall.  I can still remember the day I first discovered this poem years and years ago. I was smitten the first time I read it, and I am still smitten over a decade later.

If You Were Coming in the Fall By: Emily Dickinson

If you were coming in the fall,
I’d brush the summer by
With half a smile and half a spur,
As housewives do a fly.

If I could see you in a year,
I’d wind the months in balls,
And put them each in separate drawers,
Until their time befalls.

If only centuries delayed,
I’d count them on my hand,
Subtracting till my fingers dropped
Into Van Diemen’s land.

If certain, when this life was out,
That yours and mine should be,
I’d toss it yonder like a rind,
And taste eternity.

But now, all ignorant of the length
Of time’s uncertain wing,
It goads me, like the goblin bee,
That will not state its sting.

Happy September Everyone!