Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Au revoir Summer, Welcome Autumn #phenology

Are you enjoying Summer's last full day this year? Locally, the Autumnal Equinox occurs at 9:21 am tomorrow (numerologists may make something of 9/21 : 9/22). Our current and anticipated weather is very unSummerish: cool, cloudy, damp, with wet expected. We're under a Flash Flood Watch until some time tomorrow. According to our MNDOT, the earliest recorded snow was 9/26/42. That doesn't match what WikiPedia and Mark Seeley's Weather Almanac tell us, but we're already well past the end of August. Leaf colors keep increasing, but there's no sign yet of tamaracks turning golden. Stay tuned.

Autumn's splashes of colors
Autumn's splashes of colors
Photo by J. Harrington

End of Summer


By Stanley Kunitz


An agitation of the air,
A perturbation of the light
Admonished me the unloved year
Would turn on its hinge that night.
I stood in the disenchanted field
Amid the stubble and the stones,
Amazed, while a small worm lisped to me
The song of my marrow-bones.
Blue poured into summer blue,
A hawk broke from his cloudless tower,
The roof of the silo blazed, and I knew
That part of my life was over.
Already the iron door of the north
Clangs open: birds, leaves, snows
Order their populations forth,
And a cruel wind blows.

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