Isn’t October wonderful?

It brings us crisp-cool mornings and warm afternoon breezes, fields full of bright orange pumpkins and bushel baskets brimming with ruby red apples. It brings us the first whiffs of woodsmoke and offers us a last chance to run barefoot through the grass. It turns leaves into gold.

October, David Baker reminds us, is a neighborly month, too: a time to meet up at hayrides and gather around bonfires, to hand out treats and share ghost stories. It’s a time to pause from our raking, look over the fence, and say hello a few more times before the cold drives us all indoors.

Like Anne of Green Gables, I’m so very glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.

Neighbors in October

by David Baker

All afternoon his tractor pulls a flat wagon
with bales to the barn, then back to the waiting
chopped field. It trails a feather of smoke.
Down the block we bend with the season:
shoes to polish for a big game,
storm windows to batten or patch.
And how like a field is the whole sky now
that the maples have shed their leaves, too.
It makes us believers—stationed in groups,
leaning on rakes, looking into space. We rub blisters
over billows of leaf smoke. Or stand alone,
bagging gold for the cold days to come.