Odd that I have no autumn icons

[flemmings]

The nuns taught me to memorize poetry, which is why I was able to reconstruct this almost from memory.

Thirteen's no age at all. Thirteen is nothing.
It is not wit, or powder on the face,
Or Wednesday matinees, or misses' clothing,
Or intellect, or grace...

Thirteen keeps diaries, and tropical fish
(A month, at most); scorns jumpropes in the spring;
Could not, would fortune grant it, name its wish;
Wants nothing, everything;

Has secrets from itself, friends it despises;
Admits none to the terrors that it feels;
Owns half a hundred masks but no disguises;
And walks upon its heels.

Thirteen's anomalous— not that, not this:
Not folded bud, or wave that laps a shore,
Or moth proverbial from the chrysalis.
Is the one age defeats the metaphor.

Is not a town, like childhood, strongly walled
But easily surrounded; is no city.
Nor, quitted once, can it be quite recalled—
Not even with pity.
--Phyllis McGinley

That was mid-20th century; thirteen's not like that now, but was very much like that for me then. I was reminded of the odd alienness of being thirteen this afternoon, because I remembered another poem, one that doesn't rhyme so emphatically and that isn't anywhere online. I copied it into a Hilroy notebook when I was thirteen:

For Ontario

Although I'll never see the purple smoke
Of prairie crocuses without sharp pain
Sudden and sweet: Although I'll never hear
A prairie meadow-lark without a stop
In my quick pulse, an intaking of breath
Till the wild notes are fallen on the air;
Although a kind of day, a certain wind
Will touch me with old wonder, old delight--

Still there is something in these trees, these hills,
This orderly succession of straight roads
And fields; a sober-mantled loveliness
That quickens with content the turn of years;
So if I close my eyes, there is no choice-
This land grows like a garden in my heart.
--Dorothy Livesay

Which is very autumn and what Toronto is being now. But in fact the poem connects, in my transparent memory, to a pale chill overcast and misty morning in what could as well have been a Toronto January or March and not October at all.

Comments

[takumashii.livejournal.com]

I no longer know what it's like to be thirteen now, but yes - it was like that for me.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Sounds a lot like what thirteen was for me too. Not sure I was so far off everyone else either; but then I'm the Last Generation Before Social Networking.

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

*smiles & reminisces* - aahh Nuns bless their hearts!

[feliciter.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the poems.

I seem to have been thirteen for quite a few more years (except for the tropical fish; that was at eleven and compulsory only for 6 months, together with several classmates on the roster), if my memory serves :D

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

that was at eleven and compulsory only for 6 months, together with several classmates on the roster)

Singapore, she says, with deep meaning.

[feliciter.livejournal.com]

In Singapore, the tropical fish own you!

[chomiji]

Thirteen can be a very rough age, actually. I was surprised how lightly my daughter went through it, given how I remember it for myself.

(BTW, I made a small batch of autumn icons, but of course they may not be to your taste.)

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Going by what my friends say, eleven or even ten is the new thirteen. And I say dear god, is there no childhood at all any more?

Your icons are very beautiful. I was actually thinking more of autumn landscapes and October skies and fallen leaves, which are hard to get on icons. Even my beloved Hasui never looks quite right-- but that's because Japanese autumn colours look like faded polaroids to any inhabitant of eastern Canada.