September Again

This past Friday morning it was almost September. The sunlight on one of my bookcases at home was like honey.

I realized then how much I wanted September, this great month of beginnings. Some clock had been patiently ticking inside, and I would soon hear the rich chimes again.

The day before I had taken up a volume in my office at day’s end. I had sat beside a table lamp re-reading the first chapter of Edwin Way Teale’s Autumn Across America. Separated from its dust jacket some time earlier, the red-cloth cover was comfort in my hands, the gold lettering of the author’s signature a familiar solace.

The chance last night to attend a screening of the 1963 classic Hud led a friend and me into a favorite university neighborhood. On the way we stopped at a monument to American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. We attempted to identify on the sculpture each of the characters from the poet’s writings.

A few hours later we were walking back from the film. We kept talking about Hud and Lonnie and Alma, their conflicts and tensions, the dust in the black-and-white Texas landscape.

A New England night sky opened above us.

Yes, September had opened within.