Thoughts on Autumnal Equinox

Autumnal Equinox

The earth has rotated again on an axis inclined from perpendicular
to the plane of the ecliptic by twenty-three and a half degrees.
Maple leaves in the canopy lamp back, to a source of recession,
an acknowledging yellow. Oaks higher yet give themselves airs
in the wind, their lobbed leaves handlike, sowers of generations.
They plop their acorns on my drive, turning heroically bronze--
inadvertent feeders of squirrels, as the dogwoods are of birds,
with their scarlet berries. These signals relate to one another,
a simultaneous response to progression through the altered rays.
Likewise my mind shines back a recognition, seeing these
colored leaves as banners on the billion-masted ship of Earth
as it sails in its orbit, with the sun in its galaxy,
with the galaxy receding from others. And this mind grows,
like the leaves, slightly dizzy, but wakes to a higher intensity,
that cannot explain such magnificent, pointless purpose, though
glowing within this medium of fruitation and perishing.
Mind feels itself turn the colors of wonder: scarlet-maroon
with beholding, yellow with transiency, green in remembrance--
and looking into changes to come, a bronze of enduring.
Already, flags of lost summer spin aimlessly as the wind
grows chilly. Mind wishes to inscribe its thoughts
in a medium like the gold-amber sunlight. The light relates
these thoughts, those of the squirrels, seeing plenty, those of
the leaves, which parachute and spin, and those of this mind,
with its memories, which also wobble. The bronze oak
stands with nobility, in a firmament too blue for regrets.
I see a maple seed propeller down and land on the roof
within changes so tragic we can hardly believe this other:
maple leaves the mantle of a lattern, thought burning inside it,
sun-angle and colors and falling like the quasser-rays from
space-time, focused in Earth of this conscious universe.

Structure

In "Daytime and Starlight," Applewhite writes poems with structural variety in terms of the actual quantity of words. Some poems have short, uniform lines in regular stanzas, others have long lines in just one stanza. A few poems are just a splattering of words on the page. "Autumnal Equinox" is a dense poem; it is dense in terms of looking almost like prose, and it is dense in terms of diction. Additionally, "Autumnal Equinox" has a heavy tone because the lack of stanza breaks do not provide the divisions that allow our minds to categorize the information and imagery that Applewhite has provided thus far. The diction of the poem is so scientific, and the structure so unorganic, that as the reader, I expected structural divisions along the same lines. I feel that in a poem with complicated diction that contains words with a lot of syllables, stanza breaks are very helpful to the reader--they provide mental breaks for the reader to pause and review the text presented so far.

Diction

At times, "Autumnal Equinox" read more like a science textbook than a poem ("falling like quasar-rays from space-time"), but there were also lilting passages with clear imagery. Of course this mixture of styles is intentional, but what is its effect? Including heavier, scientific language makes the reader cognizant of the grandeur of the Earth...so many times, poems describe nature in specific, small, dainty ways: a beautiful flower, winter branches, etc., and I think that Applewhite did not want to limit himself--he impresses on the reader the importance of viewing the world in whole (toward the end: "the story is continuing"). The density of the poem is overwhelming in places, however, and by tackling so many separate ideas and images, I felt that Applewhite missed opportunities to clearly articulate a few in exchange for a more muddled portrayal of a variety.

The diction of the first few lines are not what we'd consider commonly poetic: axis, inclined, perpendicular, plane, ecliptic, degrees--all of these words are scientific, evoking a precise image. In the next few lines, the tone changes with the change in diction: now, there are words like maple leaves, canopy, yellow, oaks, airs, wind, handlike, generations. I think that Applewhite is attempting to bring together the scientific and the aesthetic to form a more complete picture of the Earth. Still, I feel that the lines with concrete imagery are the most effective: "flags of lost summer spin aimlessly" and "colored leaves as banners on the billion-masted ship of Earth." In other words, when Applewhite meshes the scientific rhetoric with more abstract, natural descriptions and creates something concrete, the reader best understands the visual picture that Applewhite is attempting to convey.