To September: an apology

By Erik Hogan

A poem in words and photos, to the month that slipped by

It was damp and gray in the early morning when you left. Clouds hung low to the horizon. Lonely birds echoed hauntingly far away. Or was the loneliness an echo of me, resounding into the world while I stood still? A trembling breeze followed your exit. It brushed my forearms in the darkness with just enough chill to awaken me to your absence. The calendar would not turn until tomorrow. But September, you were already gone. Summer lingered across these weeks gone by. A dry heat trapped under merciless clear skies wrung sweat from my skin as I sat outside. It drove me indoors. Though I waited for you through last winter's darkness and then longer still through the torrid months of summer, September, I did not notice your inception.

Evenings first spoke to me of your arrival in a suddenly evident quietude as the cicadas fell still in your presence. It caught my attention... it was a resonant absence. And in that reverent hush I listened to the delicate hymn of crickets in the dry brambles. Your setting sunlight spilled softly through the scenery. Trees and weeds waned from deep green to gold. September, I noticed you then. But I let you pass me by.

September, your demure days tumbled by so rapidly, yet I looked past, to the coloring of leaves and cooling of nights ahead. In the meantime your Coreopsis bloomed and Goldenrod spread rampant through fallow fields. Other fields held the heavy scent of hay as they sprawled wide, dotted with freshly bundled bales. By the time I sought out the corn fields they had already been harvested and razed.

September. I heard your invitation in the sounds of the migratory starlings above, murmuring like an avian river in the sky. The surges and swirls of those silhouettes of birds implored me to seek you in the deepest mountain valleys, behind cold thunderous waterfalls. But I was busy. I let you walk by, September, and I am sorry.

Erik Hogan is an Athens police officer whose photography seeks to capture nature’s beauty