Welcome to Sunday Poetry. If this is your first visit you can read about the purpose and inspiration of my Sunday poetry blogs here.

Today’s poem, Neighbors in October, by poet David Baker is a vivid glance at a familiar autumn scene.  I love the image the poem immediately calls up. Can you almost hear a rake screeching against sod?  Can you smell a bonfire.

When you think of fall, what fills your mind? What images do you see? Leaves falling? Children going back to school, scuffing feet on the sidewalk as they chat about teachers and homework assignments? Families carving pumpkins? Trick-or-treaters? It’s a season filled with pictures, isn’t it? It’s a season filled with poetry.

Remember, we read poetry together here for the pure pleasure of the experience. There are no quizzes, no right ways to read or contemplate the poem we share. Absolutely no dissecting allowed. Just come along for the “read.” What line, word or thought will you carry with you this week? If you’d like to tell us where the poem took you? We’ll listen.

Remember, too, there is a special giveaway in progress for those who comment on any Sunday Poetry blog before year’s end.  The prize is an autographed copy of Billy Collins’s Horoscopes for the Dead. See the details here. I’ve carried this precious autographed book from New York to Virginia, on to North Carolina, and now to Florida. It’s waiting for someone to claim it.

Will it be you?