Autumn in LA doesn’t make sense,
shouldn’t even be a song.
I wouldn’t even give it a second thought
It starts on Christmas day
You know what I mean. I’d be a fool to run there.
Autumn in Brooklyn, leaves falling. They do.
Autumn in Vermont, a slight mist,
tramping through the forest
Autumn in LA sounds like fun and laughter
A cacophony of horns on the 405
Doesn’t sound different than any other month
Smells like smog
The kids go off to school. And we’re free!
The leaves change colors in autumn
in New York, weather cooling down
We don’t have that here
But the coloring of my liquidambar trees
And there’s a fragrance to it. Autumn.
There’s a street that has a tunnel of trees
They all turn, it’s a very pretty street
Nobody can afford to live on it
but it’s a very pretty street
Autumn in New York makes sense.
Autumn in LA doesn’t make sense.
Created by poet Sarah Jacobus, with the poets at OPICA. Sarah writes about the process, "I chose an autumn theme for today, despite the fact that it’s over 90 degrees here. I gave each participant a little pumpkin to hold, feel, smell. We did call and response with the first verse of James Whitcomb Riley’s The Frost is on the Punkin and made some vigorous kyoucks and gobbles and clucks. A woman in the group started humming Turkey in the Straw, and we realized we could sing the poem to that tune. So we did. Then we listened to Sarah Vaughan’s arrangement of Autumn in New York and talked about songs as poems."
