Poems About Harvests and Halloween

Thanksgiving in Canada is the second Monday of October.  Having immigrated to the US when I was 8 and lived in that country until I was 21, I thought that Thanksgiving was all about pilgrims, the Mayflower, etc.  I moved to Canada and soon thereafter began to try to grow most of my own food.  The first fall as I was harvesting potatoes, I realized that thanksgiving is a harvest festival.  I hadn't connected all the harvest festivals that happen all over the world to thanksgiving which seemed to me to be all about turkeys and pilgrims.  It was an interesting thing to realize how that first thanksgiving experience in the States and all of the preparation we did for it at school exerted such an influence.

Here are some poems about celebrating the harvest from a few of my favorite poets and a link to their books.

I enjoy Aileen Fisher's poetry and used a number of her poems in the Games to Play With a Baby classes I developed and ran for 10 years.  Here's one about leaves:

Rain of Leaves by Aileen Fisher
It’s raining big,
It’s raining small,
It’s raining autumn leaves
In fall.

It’s raining gold
And red and brown
As autumn leaves
Come raining down.

It's raining everywhere
I look
It's raining bookmarks
On my book!

Gathering Leaves by Robert Frost

 Spades take up leaves
No better than spoons,
And bags full of leaves
Are as light as balloons.

I make a great noise
Of rustling all day
Like rabbit and deer
Running away.

But the mountains I raise
Elude my embrace,
Flowing over my arms
And into my face.

I may load and unload
Again and again
Till I fill the whole shed,
But what have I then?

Next to nothing for weight,
And since they grow duller
From contact with earth,
Next to nothing for color.

Next to nothing for use.
But a crop is a crop,
And who’s to say where
The harvest shall stop?

* * *

A poem about a November Thanksgiving

All in a Word
By Aileen Fisher

T for time to be together, turkey, talk, and tangy weather.
H for harvest stored away, home, and hearth, and holiday.
A for autumn's frosty art, and abundance in the heart.
N for neighbors, and November, nice things, new things to remember.
K for kitchen, kettles' croon, kith and kin expected soon.
S for sizzles, sights, and sounds, and something special that abounds.
That spells ~~~THANKS---for joy in living and a jolly good Thanksgiving. 

 

And for Halloween poems Jack Prelutsky is a treat not to be missed.  I like the way he uses language, rhyme and rhythm.  I find his work fun to read aloud.

It's Halloween is a fun collection of poems about what it's like to go out on a Halloween night.  Ages 5 and up

 



The Headless Horseman Rides Tonight: More Poems to Trouble Your Sleep
Starts off with a poem about a mummy and goes on with other scary things.  For ages 8 and up.