Remember, remember the fifth of November
Nov. 8th, 2011 12:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI went to a bonfire Saturday night, complete with Guy Fawkes effigy and "Remember, remember, the fifth of November." We hiked past a picnic pavilion with a pagoda-sloped roof and thick stone columns, probably quite charming by day but hulking in the darkness, and followed the flickering dot of the flames through the woods like a will-o'-the-wisp.
Fortunately we made it to the bonfire, rather than walking into a mire. But it's easy to imagine why travelers once would have followed will-o'-the-wisps; you have to get quite close to a fire before it stays clearly in one place.
***
All of a sudden it doesn't look like autumn anymore, though it's not cold enough to be winter. The trees are bare, and the fields are sere and yellow. No one writes poems about the in-between seasons, do they? Poems are about days that distill the quintessence of the season, not the crisp dry time between leaf fall and snow fall, or the mushy slush covered mud of not-quite-spring.
Fortunately we made it to the bonfire, rather than walking into a mire. But it's easy to imagine why travelers once would have followed will-o'-the-wisps; you have to get quite close to a fire before it stays clearly in one place.
***
All of a sudden it doesn't look like autumn anymore, though it's not cold enough to be winter. The trees are bare, and the fields are sere and yellow. No one writes poems about the in-between seasons, do they? Poems are about days that distill the quintessence of the season, not the crisp dry time between leaf fall and snow fall, or the mushy slush covered mud of not-quite-spring.
