Falling Into Lines - Weekend Mini Challenge

Fall is falling where I live.  Fall is even falling off (meaning that it is right now a wintry 33 degrees fahrenheit.)  I live, in short, in mountains.  Which people also sometimes fall off of.

 

And which are littered with apple trees that apples fall off of, and apples, come to think of it, are rumored to have generated a fall of their very own.

Masaccio's Expulsion From Eden
Before/After Restoration
(Wiki Commons)

Sure, In some places (I’m thinking of you, Kerry), Spring is springing, but spring too animates certain kinds of falls (as in Victoria). 

Which brings me to my prompt-- fall.  In whatever version you wish.  From grace.  Off the wagon.  Onto the ground.  Into the sea.  Or luck.  Or out of luck. Or love.  Or out of love. 

Of course, you can simply write of fall as Autumn.  Or something spooky that happens in Autumn (like October).  But do not feel required to!  I really want this to be very broad.

You can start writing right now, and read NO MORE (other than your friends/co-poets).  Or, if you want further inspiration, you can read a couple of my favorite examples of poems involving falls.

I’m giving you an escape hatch because the first selection is from Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, published in 1590, where, towards the end of Book I, the Redcrosse Knight, fighting a terrible dragon, is burnt (in part because his armor has been poisoned), beaten and falls into a pit, which seems the absolute end of him, but which turns out to be a Well of Life, i.e. renewal,  

Healed, the knight fights pretty well the next day but then is again wounded, and the second time happens to fall smack into a creek of Balm.  Spenser seems to have loved this device and I too have always loved it because it reminds me how one can literally stumble onto a good thing (even if it seems pretty awful at first hit.)  

  
XXVIII  (From Book One of The Faerie Queene - describing wounded, poisoned,Redcrosse Knight) 

Faint, wearie, sore, emboyled, grieved, brent

 With heat, toyle, wounds, armes, smart, and inward fire,         

  That never man such mischiefes did torment;

  Death better were, death did he oft desire,

  But death will never come, when needes require.

  Whom so dismayd when that his foe beheld,

 He cast to suffer him no more respire,                     
But gan his sturdy sterne about to weld,

And him so strongly stroke, that to the ground him feld.

                    XXIX

It fortuned, (as faire it then befell,)

  Behind his backe unweeting, where he stood,

  Of auncient time there was a springing well,                     

  From which fast trickled forth a silver flood,

  Full of great vertues, and for med'cine good.

  Whylome, before that cursed Dragon got

  That happy land, and all with innocent blood

  Defyld those sacred waves, it rightly hot                        

_The well of life_, ne yet his vertues had forgot.

                    XXX

For unto life the dead it could restore,

  And guilt of sinfull crimes cleane wash away,

  Those that with sicknesse were infected sore

  It could recure, and aged long decay                            

  Renew, as one were borne that very day.

  Both Silo  this, and Jordan did excell,

  And th' English Bath, and eke the German Spau;

  Ne can Cephise, nor Hebrus match this well:

Into the same the knight back overthrowen, fell.                  

Another poet that I would direct you too is Rainer Maria Rilke.  He has written a few beautiful poems about Autumn--one called Autumn Day -about ripening, and another even more beautiful (I think) poem called Autumn, about everything falling, and Someone holding that falling in their hands.  (I cannot find a good link for that one.)   But here's another Rilke poem that uses the idea of a fall in a non-autumnal way (writing more, perhaps, of the fall of night): 

Evening

The sky puts on the darkening blue coat
held for it by a row of ancient trees;
you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight,
one journeying to heavens, one that falls:

and leave you, not at home in either one,
not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses,
not calling to eternity with the passion
of what becomes a star each night, and rises:

and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel)

your life, with its immensity and fear,
so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,
it is alternately stone in you and star.


by Rainer Maria Rilke, Stephen Mitchell (best translator of Rilke ever in my view) from The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, edited and translated by Stephen Mitchell, Vintage International.  (I hope this is not copyright infringement and urge you to all buy Mitchell's translations of Rilke or of anyone.)  

Speaking of copyright--other than the Masaccio (ha!), all the pics and drawings here are mine, Karin Gustafson, Manicddaily (also known as Outlawyer on Blogger.)  Anyone is free to use a pic for their poem, but please give proper attribution. 

Anyway, poets, may some poem falls into lines for you today.  Please do visit your friends.