Monday, September 10, 2012

September

Monday can be slow to unfold.  Sleepy eyes and heads that long to stay pillow prostrate abound in my house.  An odd motivation helps me get up – it is trash and recycling day which I DO NOT want to miss.  Pick up time is early and if that truck passes us by there is no second chance like I had for the school bus when I was a kid living just before a cul-de-sac.  I have boundless gratitude for the sanitation services of my city because dealing with refuse is something very important!  In addition to the thanks in my heart this morning as I trolleyed trash to the roadside there was lightness in my skin also.  Cool air, without aid of inside air conditioning, was touching me for the first time in weeks.   Whoopee!  September is here offering, as it usually does, liberation from the heat of August.
 
September, a noun, is defined at dictionary.com.
1.  the ninth month of the year, containing 30 days.
 
Interestingly the same site gives the word origin as from Latin septem meaning seven – so called because it was the seventh month of the old Roman calendar which began the year in March but was replaced by the Julian calendar reform in 46 BCE.
 
September brings a settling into the school year’s tardy bells, field trips, homework, and friend-filled days.  We embrace fall recreation soccer, televised college football games, the new apple crop, beloved jeans, and blessed cooler temperatures.  Newness accompanies all of this that is exciting.  We plan our days differently with increased routine.  Meals might change as temperatures arouse more cooking and less local melon.  Darkness slowly gains ground on light as we mark time toward the Autumnal Equinox (Saturday, September 22, 2012 in the northern hemisphere) when day and night are nearly equal in length.  A stroll no longer ends in boundless sweat and biological need for a popsicle.  Early morning breezes bear a chill that tickles every tiny hair on our limbs and makes us wrap our arms around ourselves with delight.
 
Welcome September, nifty ninth month named seven.  I, for one, am glad you are here.     


Cultivating September
dangling brown stem stalks offer no more
as once plump rouge tomatoes cage ripened
muscadine vines now last to proffer sweet
fruit and apples of faraway orchards posing
orbs last sugary lick yield from earth moving
toward darkness cool inviting fall that fades

into autumn months bodies who long for slow
Virgo nights stilled under cloud covers mound
carrots, cabbage, cauliflower furrow ground
forestall sturdy cloth coats keeping limbs
warm stretch toward today’s task, plow under
stick cucumber vines, squash that gave out