It is the last full day of what has been a horrendous season.  Summer 2011 has been the most brutal in my memory.  I would hope to never see another like it, and yet I fear it may be an omen of summers to come in our changing climate.

But that is for the future.  For now, thinking about the end of summer reminded me of a poem I came across several weeks ago and I decided to look it up again today and share it with you.

End of Summer

By Stanley Kunitz (1905–2006)

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.

The changing of the seasons always has something of the bittersweet about it as we realize "That part of my life was over," but the change from summer to fall seems more sweet than bitter for me.  The sweet welcoming breath of autumn is refreshing beyond words after the heat of summer.

The "iron door of the north" has long since clanged open.  The migration of the birds and of the Monarch butterflies has been under way for weeks now and, in the case of the hummingbirds and some of the shorebirds, for months.  Their populations have been ordered forth ahead of the "cruel winds" of winter and they have heeded the call.

And now, I, too, heed the call as I make preparations to get my fall vegetable garden planted in time to benefit from any autumn rains that may fall.  (Fingers crossed!)  Goodbye and good riddance, Summer.  Welcome, sweet Autumn.