Listen! {in memory of summer evenings}

“Listen! The wind is rising, and the air is wild with leaves,
We have had our summer evenings, now for October eves!”

Humbert Wolfe

Autumn has only arrived, in accordance with the calendar. Though leaves have been falling and the air is chill each morning for a few weeks now.

It’s apple time, but I feel a glimmer of nostalgia for some special summer evenings that passed this year. Artisanal pizza eaten outdoors in Waitsfield, Vermont—with old dear friends who live in Ontario, al fresco dining at a secluded cottage in Corinth, Vermont—with our exiled Vermont-to-Glasgow friends, walking the beach on Plum Island in late August as the sun went down, watching fireworks by a campfire with friends….

So let the leaves fly, I’m okay with that.

We had heat, a good garden, a few hard knocks on the farm—and yet here we are, ready to put the grounds to bed before another year. The ground can only be fertile by being allowed to rest. It is the same for we people, I think.

Ready for pumkins and wool sweaters. Ready to take the quilts from the cedar chest and fold away the light cotton covers of summer. As I write the fire crackles, rain and fog cloak the morning.