"I awoke today and found the frost perched on the town . . . ."

The fall foliage is long gone here in central Maine. The nights grow longer, and the days can be windy and cold. It was 20 degrees outside at 4 a.m. today, which was downright balmy compared to the 10-degree readings earlier this week.

We've already used the woodstove several times in recent days, and although the calendar claims it's still autumn, that's misleading. I've banked the outside of the chicken coop with bags of leaves, to help insulate it, and we had snow and freezing rain this week, before I could finish raking. Now the yard out back is iced up, and each footfall triggers a noisy crunch. All of which brings to mind a song that, to me, is synonymous with this changing of the seasons.

The wondrously talented Canadian singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell wrote Urge for Going, but I associate it with New Hampshire-born folk singer Tom Rush. Rush covered the song on The Circle Game, an album he released in 1968. I graduated from high school in Massachusetts that year and went off to college in Boston, some 60 miles from home, so Rush's rendition has a tremendously strong nostalgic pull. It's hard to believe more than 50 years have passed since the album's release.

What follows are Mitchell’s lyrics, which Rush altered a bit, primarily to reflect the fact that he's singing a song in the first person that was written by a woman. You can find videos of both artists performing Urge for Going on You Tube, including a version by Rush, which is available here.
 

I awoke today and found the frost perched on the town

It hovered in a frozen sky, then it gobbled summer down

When the sun turns traitor cold

and all the trees are shivering in a naked row

I get the urge for going but I never seem to go

I get the urge for going

When the meadow grass is turning brown

Summertime is falling down and winter is closing in

I had me a man in summertime

He had summer-colored skin

And not another girl in town

My darling's heart could win

But when the leaves fell on the ground, and

Bully winds came around, pushed them face down in the snow

He got the urge for going

And I had to let him go

He got the urge for going

When the meadow grass was turning brown

Summertime was falling down and winter was closing in

Now the warriors of winter they gave a cold triumphant shout

And all that stays is dying, all that lives is getting out

See the geese in chevron flight flapping and a-racing on before the snow

They've got the urge for going, and they've got the wings so they can go

They get the urge for going

When the meadow grass is turning brown

Summertime is falling down and winter is closing in

I'll ply the fire with kindling now, I'll pull the blankets up to my chin

I'll lock the vagrant winter out and bolt my wandering in

I'd like to call back summertime and have her stay for just another month or so

But she's got the urge for going and I guess she'll have to go

She gets the urge for going when the meadow grass is turning brown

And all her empires are falling down

Winter's closing in