It's back to school time (next Wednesday in Windham). For both children and adults alike, there is a blend of melancholy excitement that fills the air. These juxtaposed emotions are also found in a work by Jane Kenyon:
Three Songs at the End of SummerPlease stop by Dori Reads for this week's Poetry Friday Round-Up. Have a great weekend!
A second crop of hay lies cut
and turned. Five gleaming crows
search and peck between the rows.
They make a low, companionable squawk,
and like midwives and undertakers
possess a weird authority.
Crickets leap from the stubble,
parting before me like the Red Sea.
The garden sprawls and spoils.
Across the lake the campers have learned
to water ski. They have, or they haven’t.
Sounds of the instructor’s megaphone
suffuse the hazy air. "Relax! Relax!"
Cloud shadows rush over drying hay,
fences, dusty lane, and railroad ravine.
The first yellowing fronds of goldenrod
brighten the margins of the woods.
Schoolbooks, carpools, pleated skirts;
water, silver-still, and a vee of geese.
You can read the other two songs here, or in Collected Poems [811.54 KEN].
Photo © Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.
5 comments:
Goodbye summer! Goodbye freedom to read and write at leisure! Goodbye eating when I'm hungry instead of when the clock says I have 30 minutes now, and not again until hours later! Goodbye same shorts and T-shirts over and over again! Goodbye bare feet! Goodbye summer!!
We're always busiest in the summer at the library. I know I look forward to its end! Have a great school year, Mary Lee.
Thanks for sharing this lovely poem, Diane. I work at home, so nothing really changes for me in my physical life at the end of summer. However, mentally, I feel...relief. There is something about September that gives me a sense of renewal and anticipation, an excitement to start new projects, especially after the always melancholy August. :)
I absolutely love the midwives and undertakers in this poem. Who would have ever thought of adding those images to an end of summer poem, but Kenyon.
Carpools and schoolbooks start of Wednesday. I think I'm ready.
Kenyon's poem captures the anxious energy of the change of seasons.
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