At the End of Summer

It is not really the end of summer. In 2025, the autumnal equinox will occur on Monday, September 22 to make it astronomically official. But it does feel like the end of summer seeing students returning to classes, and a few signs of autumn appearing in nature.

Here is the first section of Jane Kenyon's  "Three Songs at the End of Summer"

A second crop of hay lies cut
and turned. Five gleaming crows
search and peck between the rows.
They make a low, companionable squawk,
and like midwives and undertakers
possess a weird authority.

Crickets leap from the stubble,
parting before me like the Red Sea.
The garden sprawls and spoils.

Across the lake the campers have learned
to water ski. They have, or they haven’t.
Sounds of the instructor’s megaphone
suffuse the hazy air. “Relax! Relax!”

Cloud shadows rush over drying hay,
fences, dusty lane, and railroad ravine.
The first yellowing fronds of goldenrod
brighten the margins of the woods.

Schoolbooks, carpools, pleated skirts;
water, silver-still, and a vee of geese."

by Jane Kenyon  -  read the full "Three Songs at the End of Summer" from Poetry

 

 

Though this is not hay, but a Wheatfield With Crows, one of Van Gogh's most famous paintings, it feels right for this time of year. It has often been claimed that this was his final work, and that the dead-end path and the threatening sky with crows heralded his approaching death. That symbolic interpretation is a persistent myth unsupported by concrete evidence.

Image: Vincent van Gogh, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons