Autumn (Revised)

The granddaughter awakens
It is early morning, in the garden, pumpkins glow orange
As the wind makes dry rattling wind chimes of leaves
That it pushes around a tree
In which five ravens sit facing west
One she raven caws softly to the others as she tells a story.

The granddaughter sits at her desk, she is writing a story
She begins: The goddess Morrigan awakens
She rises and calls in the spirits of the west
It is early morning- the harvest moon glows orange
She puts on her necklace the one with a pendant shaped like a tree
Bare of its leaves

Morrigan stretches forth her hand, in which she holds green leaves.
The grandmother enters the bedroom where the granddaughter is busy writing her story
The ravens watch the grandmother and granddaughter from their perch on the tree.
The orange cat lying at the foot of the bed awakens
The rising sun casts an orange light into the room; the granddaughter writes facing west

The goddess twirls the leaves while facing west
The leaves
Slowly change from green to orange
The grandmother peeps curiously at the granddaughter’s story
Morrigan awakens
Fall as she looks out to watch the leaves change color on the tree.

The grandmother smiles as the ravens stir on the limbs of the tree
They stretch their wings to the west
Cold air rattles the window of the granddaughter’s room and awakens
The orange cat who is dreaming of chasing dried leaves
The granddaughter pauses her story
As the grandmother drapes a shawl across her shoulders against the chill; it is orange

The pumpkins in the vegetable patch glow orange
The ravens have flown back to the tree
As the granddaughter thinks about her story
The west
wind blows sending more leaves
Sailing into the air- The grandmother who has been napping awakens

The granddaughter’s imagination awakens as the room blazes with the color orange
The leaves of the tree
Stirred by the west wind wait for her to finish her story

Dear Readers,
Last week I published my sestina poem “Autumn” and this week I have worked and revised it a bit. I feel that I need to talk about my original idea before I explain the changes that I made. The idea to write “Autumn” came to me in bits and pieces. First I was inspired by the beautiful autumn that we are having this year. As I was out on my walks, I would see images in my mind of a woman sitting at a spinning wheel, changing green summer grasses into the brown grasses of fall. I thought about creating a goddess character named Autumn and her daughter Fall. I decided not to use the spinning wheel because it seemed to cliche and so the goddess changes the leaves by twirling them. Then I was inspired by a sestina poem called, “Sestina” by Elizabeth Bishop, in her poem Bishop’s two characters are a grandmother and granddaughter. I decided to create my own grandmother and granddaughter characters. I also threw in the ravens an allusion to Edgar Allen Poe’s poem “The Raven.” In my revision, I decided to add certain mythic elements such as the goddess Morrigan and the direction of the west. I did some research and decided to use the mythology from the goddess religion, since it was a goddess character that I was working with. I found that according to the goddess religion Morrigan is the goddess of autumn and west is the direction associated with autumn. In line 10, I also added a harvest moon, which is also associated with fall. I made many other changes to some of the lines, shortening some and lengthening others. Hope you enjoy.