Welcome back to the Daily Poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Cudder.

Today's poem is by James Whitcomb Riley, an American poet who lived from 1849 to 1916. He was known as the

Hoosier poet and the children's poet, because he wrote, well, lots of poetry for children and lots of humorous poetry.

Interestingly, of the approximately 1,000 poems Riley wrote, the majority are in dialect.

His most famous works include Little Orphan Annie and the Raggedy Man.

But the poem that I'm going to read today is called When the Frost is on the Pumpkin.

This is how it goes. When the Frost is on the Puncan. This is how it goes.

When the frost is on the pumpkin and the fodder is in the shock and you hear the kook and gobble of the strutton turkey cock and the clackin of the guineas and the cluckin'n of the

hens, hallelujah, as he tiptoes on the fence. Oh, it's then's the times the fellow is a feeling at his best,

with the rise and sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest as he leaves the house

bareheaded and goes out to feed the stock when the frost is on the pumpkin and the fodder is in

the shock. They's something kind of hearty-like about the atmosphere, when the heat of summer's over and the cool and fall is here. Of course, like about the atmosphere when the heat of summer's over

and the cool and fall is here.

Of course we miss the flowers and the blossoms on the trees and the mumble of the hummingbirds

and buzz and other bees.

But the air is so appetizing, and the landscape through the haze of a crisp and sunny morning

over the early autumn days, is a picture that no painter has

the color in to mock when the frost is on the punk and the fodder is in the shock.

The husky, rusty rustle of the tossals of the corn and the rasping of the tangled leaves

as golden as the morn.

The stubble and the furries kind of lonesome like, but still

preaching sermons to us so the barns they growed to fill. The straw stack in the metter

...