哈尔·勃兰德/Hal Borland
September is more than a month,really;it is a season,an achieveme nt in itself.It begins with August's leftovers and it ends with October's preparations,but along the way it achieves special satisfactions.Af ter summer's heat and haste,the year consolidates itself.Deliberate Se ptember--in its own time and tempo--begins to sum up another summer.
With September comes a sense of autumn.It creeps in one misty dawn and vanishes in the hot afternoon.It tiptoes through the treetops.roug ing a few leaves,then rides a tuft of thistle down across the valley an d away.It sits on a hill top and hoots like an October owl in the dusk.It plays tag with the wind.September is a changeling,busy as a squirre l in a hickory tree,idle as a languid brook.It is summer's ripen and r ichness fulfilled.
Some of the rarest days of the year come in the September season--da ys when it is comfortably cool but pulsing with life,when the sky is cl ear and clean,the air crisp,the wind free of dust.Meadows still smell of hay and the sweetness of cut grass.September flowers are less varied than those of May but so abundant that they make September another flowe ry month.Goldenrod comes by mid-August,but rises to a peak of golden a bundance in early September.Late thistles make spectacular purple accen ts.And asters blossom everywhere,along the roadsides,in meadows,on t he hilltops,even in city lots,ranging in color from pure white through all degrees of lavender to the royal New England purple.
We think of spring as the miracle time,when opening bud and new lea f proclaim the persistence of life.But September is when the abiding wo nder makes itself known in a subtler way.Now growth comes to annual fru ition,and preparations are completed for another year,another generati on.The acorn ripens and the hickory nut matures.The plant commits its future to the seed and the root.The insect stows tomorrow in the egg an d the pupa.The surge is almost over and life begins to relax.