This Colorful Friday

THANKSGIVING TREES
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

Autumn Sun, 1912 ~ Egon Schiele (1890 - 1918)

As we struggle past another year of COVID,
these spare, elegant paintings (above & below)
are a reminder of the stark reality that
Schiele (age 28), his wife Edith, and their unborn child
all died in the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918.

Two weeks ago, I posted 3 days early for Veterans Day. Today I'm posting 2 days early for the Friday After Thanksgiving, colloquially referred to as Black Friday for the past six decades. However, black need not be the only color choice for the day. How about brown, for example:

“Autumnal — nothing to do with leaves. It is to do with a certain brownness at the edges of the day. . . . Brown is creeping up on us, take my word for it. . . . Russets and tangerine shades of old gold flushing the very outside edge of the senses. . . deep shining ochres, burnt umber and parchments of baked earth—reflecting on itself and through itself, filtering the light. At such times, perhaps, coincidentally, the leaves might fall, somewhere, by repute. Yesterday was blue, like smoke.”

from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
by Tom Stoppard (b 1937)

The "certain brownness" of Stoppard's autumn includes a gorgeous array of unusual seasonal tones: russet, tangerine, gold, ochre, umber, blue! In the next poem, Anne Barbara Ridler offers a similar palette of surprising, "raging colour": purple, red, rose, amber. What could be more perfect to brighten a cold "Black" Friday:

Autumn Day

The raging colour of this cold Friday
Eats up our patience like a fire,
Consumes our willingness to endure,
Here the crumpled maple, a gold fabric,
The beech by beams empurpled, the holy sycamore,
Berries red-hot, the rose's core--
The sun emboldens to burn in porphyry and amber.

Pick up the remnants of our resignation
Where we left them, and bring our loving passion,
Before the mist from the dark sea at our feet
Where mushrooms cling like limpets in the grass,
Quenching our fierceness, leaves us in a worse case.

Anne Barbara Ridler (1912 - 2001)

Autumn Trees, 1911

In the following sonnet, Elizabeth Jennings makes no mention of color, describing instead the tenacity of the last leaves to fall. Some are ready to go by Halloween, others by Thanksgiving. Others linger well beyond the autumn holidays, taking nearly another season before the branches are "utterly bare," before we see those bones:

Beech

They will not go. These leaves insist on staying.
Coinage like theirs looked frail six weeks ago.
What hintings at, excitement of delaying,
Almost as if some richer fruits could grow

If leaves hung on against each swipe of storm,
If branches bent but still did not give way.
Today is brushed with sun. The leaves are warm.
I picked one from the pavement and it lay

With borrowed shining on my Winter hand.
Persistence of this nature sends the pulse
Beating more rapidly. When will it end,

That pride of leaves? When will the branches be
Utterly bare, and seem like something else,
Now half-forgotten, no part of a tree?

Elizabeth Jennings (1926 - 2001)

Small Tree in Late Autumn, 1911

So if you happen to be feeling overwhelmed by Thanksgiving and Black Friday and Cyber Monday, take a break from it all and immerse yourself in the vivid colors of this special weekend that comes but once a year!

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Previous Egon Schiele Posts
How A Body Sways
Allerseelen
Easter Siblings

&

A nice long poem for reading
anytime during October through December:
"Kicking the Leaves"
by Donald Hall

Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, December 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ "Trees & Shells"
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com