This poem, one of my mom's favourites, was on my fridge for a long time when I was a kid. She'd ripped it out of an outdated university textbook anthology of hers. On the side of the page facing it, was an image of autumn birch trees with blue sky peeking between them. I read it every day, and it is one of two poems I can still dictate on command.

A Vagabond Song (Bliss Carman)

There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood --
Touch of manner, hint of mood;
And my heart is like a rhyme,
With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.

The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry
Of bugles going by.
And my lonely spirit thrills
To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills.

There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir;
We must rise and follow her,
When from every hill of flame
She calls and calls each vagabond by name.


(Obviously) I took my blog name from this poem. I often feel vagabondish. I don't like to stay in one place; I feel pulled by seasons. Not necessarily to go somewhere new -- though sometimes to go somewhere new -- but always emotionally. Seasons pull me back to previous selves, or into new phases where I do or do not want a partner, or I do or do not want to be an academic, or I want to throw away all my posessions or I want to gather new ones and decorate myself differently.

Autumn gives me spiritual stir. Asters are flowers, but that line gives me images of the grey branchy trees on Mount McKay driving out to Vanderwees farm to pick a pumpkin near the end of October. They look like smoke upon the hills (and I feel more spiritually moved by trees than flowers). The deep quiet and day-brightness, night-blueness, and metallic smell of winter stir me. Especially the quiet. The process of spring-into-summer winds me up like a spring, cranking my smile wide, and puts me into adventure mode. I think it's supposed to be passe in poetry to be overly moved by nature (it's a projected romantic construct etc. etc.) but that doesn't bother me. I think it's real and amazing that the body moves in tandem with the seasons, feeling them, and that the seasons can massage the mind and body in such ways as to effect growth and change. I like the idea of being called by October.

Anyway, I arrived in Seattle yesterday, after almost a whole year of living in the same city, which hasn't happened for the last 5 years. I remember why I like to move around so much. This is the call of vagabondism, the tactile experience of expansion of self: I am feeling boundless gratitude for the thousand small challenges of a new city, many fears. Because everything is new and uncomfortable, every step is an expansion out of fear and unknowing into knowing and triumph. About to go into training, I feel that I am about to spend a whole month in a perpetual state of high (performance) anxiety. This is my vagabond song.