Changing Seasons

Ruth Hanna Sachs

When first I moved to Pennsylvania, I fell in love with the profound beauty of the place. Flowers I had never seen, fragrances I could not have imagined after a thousand Texas springs. Grasses without fire ants that invited me to sit and soak in the view. Chill night winds, even in summer.

It did not take long to adjust to the rhythm of life, a rhythm I’d never known. Dead of winter thaws into modest spring bursts into wildly exuberant summer shines into brilliant autumn quietens into sotto voce winter. (Click on the links for a poem from each section of the book.)

As an amateur genealogist, I had encountered the born/died repetition that could stretch back ten or twenty documented generations. Yet now, it made sense as never before. The rhythm of life that bloomed and faded, only to bloom again, paralleled the generations that went before me and those that will follow.

The poetry I had written, the poetry that I could not help but write now, echoed this miraculous state of being.

If you taste a hint of summer glory or see your own grandmother, sister, or father-in-law in any of these poems, I will feel like I’ve succeeded with this unpretentious volume.

All the best —

Site last updated: October 31, 2007.