Autumn Equinox Eve

In less than 24 hours, we in the Northern Hemisphere will observe this year’s Autumn Equinox. It occurs tomorrow at 1:50 pm CDT where we live. In recognition of the upcoming cold and flu season, this morning I got a Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) vaccination. Flu shot and COVID booster are still pending.

autumn leaves drift by my window

Photo by J. Harrington

Mother Nature is honoring the seasonal change by shifting the wind. It’s now blowing out of the north and littering the ground with the first real batch of falling leaves this season. Our first weekend this autumn is forecast to be a rainy one. We need it. Some of the Arrowhead is abnormally dry but most of Minnesota is experiencing drought, almost a quarter of the state, extreme drought.

Today is another community supported agriculture [CSA] pickup day. In a little while we’ll head off to get our weekly share, this week comprised of:

• DELICATA SQUASH
• EGGPLANT
• ONIONS
• POTATOES
• ITALIAN PARSLEY, and
• BROCCOLI

A batch of sourdough is proofing in the refrigerator until tomorrow. A quiet, rainy day with the smell of baking bread filling the house while I drink coffee and read something mellow seems like a wonderful, peaceful way to begin a new season that, all too soon, will end with the hecticness of Christmas holiday preparations.

Thinking of Frost

Major Jackson     1968 – 

I thought by now my reverence would have waned,
matured to the tempered silence of the bookish or revealed 
how blasé I’ve grown with age, but the unrestrained
joy I feel when a black skein of geese voyages like a dropped 
string from God, slowly shifting and soaring, when the decayed 
apples of an orchard amass beneath its trees like Eve’s
first party, when driving and the road Vanna-Whites its crops
of corn whose stalks will soon give way to a harvester’s blade
and turn the land to a man’s unruly face, makes me believe
I will never soothe the pagan in me, nor exhibit the propriety
of the polite. After a few moons, I’m loud this time of year,
unseemly as a chevron of honking. I’m fire in the leaves,
obstreperous as a New England farmer. I see fear
in the eyes of his children. They walk home from school,
as evening falls like an advancing trickle of bats, the sky
pungent as bounty in chimney smoke. I read the scowl
below the smiles of parents at my son’s soccer game, their agitation,
the figure of wind yellow leaves make of quaking aspens.

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