October is my favorite month. You still have the joyful expectations of the new school year (and at DePaul the knowledge that your fall quarter is bookended by a 5 week break), yet you feel the changing of the season.  You look forward to slowing down, to burrowing in, to some time to lie fallow and just be.

I am no longer surrounded by the beautiful maple forest of my childhood home as the leaves change, so I need to look elsewhere to celebrate the season.  I’d love to hear what evokes an autumnal mood in you.  For me, Mary Oliver’s poetry helps usher in new seasons.  Feel free to share your favorite poems – or songs or paintings or books or photos – that distill the season for you .

Song for Autumn

In the deep fall
don’t you imagine the leaves think how
comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don’t you think
the trees themselves, especially those with mossy,
warm caves, begin to think

of the birds that will come — six, a dozen — to sleep
inside their bodies? And don’t you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
vanishes, and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its
bellows. And at evening especially,
the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way

by:  Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems: Volume 2

Katie Brick is the Director of the Office of Religious Diversity at DePaul University