"The Colors of September"

"The goldenrod is yellow,

The corn is turning brown;

The trees in apple orchards

With fruit are bending down."

Last week, driving through the countryside, I noticed the goldenrod showing yellow heads and this poem began to echo in my head. September is here.. And with it school starts again for both teachers and kids. Every year in early September these words would be written on the chalkboard of my primary classroom and for me they are still an integral part of this time of year.

This year as they repeated themselves in my mind, they began to take on a different meaning from before. I have now surpassed the three score and ten years mentioned in Psalm 90: 10 “The days of our life are seventy years, or perhaps eighty, if we are strong; even then their span is only trial and trouble; they are gone and we fly away” [NRSV] and so I am comfortably ensconced in the autumn of my years.

Some friends, my age and younger have been diagnosed with life threatening illnesses, while some of the rest of us have begun to mature into what we are meant to be. Still others of us find that what we have experienced over those years has given us wisdom that we can share with others. The years remaining to us, however long or short they will be, are our final chance to leave a harvest for those who follow.

What will your harvest be from the autumn of your life?

Here is the complete poem “September” by Helen Hunt Jackson [1830-1885]

September

The goldenrod is yellow

The corn is turning brown;

The trees in apple orchards

With fruit are bending down.

The gentian’s bluest fringes

Are curing in the sun;

In dusty pods the milkweed

Its hidden silk has spun.

The sedges haunt their harvest,

In every meadow’s nook;

And asters by the brookside

Make asters in the brook.

From dewy lanes at morning

The grapes’ sweet odors rise;

At noon the roads all flutter

With yellow butterflies.

By all those lovely tokens

September days are here;

With summer’s best of weather

And autumn’s best of cheer.

Helen Hunt Jackson [1830-1885]

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