September

I just saw a monarch butterfly drift across the backyard early this morning. It rose out of the weeds and grapevine, sank for a moment, rose again and was caught by the wind. I haven't read beyond the headlines about monarch migration and fears of monarch demise. From what little I know I'm either awed that this vulnerable creature is about to make a journey of many thousands of miles or skeptical that this particular butterfly is going to make it much past southern Illinois, or even down to the south suburbs.

Last night I sat in the same backyard, scrolling through my Twitter feed. Same chair, same overcast sky. It was the sound of the wind that drew me out there in the cool almost-dark, a whispering sound that I hoped would wash away the scrapes and cares of the day. That same September wind kept trees and shrubbery in motion this morning and closer to the ground, explored the weeds and straggling gone-to-seed stems of dill in the garden.

Cue Jessye Norman singing Richard Strauss's song "September." It's a German poem by Hermann Hesse.

Der Garten trauert,
kühl sinkt in die Blumen der Regen... 

The garden mourns,
Cool rain sinks into the flowers...

There's plenty more elegiac poetry and music in the rest of the Four Last Songs cycle. Hardly the stuff of a busy Saturday in early fall. Behind my back, out on the street, a huge piece of machinery arrived noisily at about 8:30am on a flatbed truck, I'm guessing for next week's street paving operation in the block north of my home. 

Adrift on Twitter last night, I watched as so many sad things flipped by under my scrolling thumb. A black man shot in his own apartment in Texas, the continued laments for children still separated from their families at the U.S. border, ALS patients monitoring research, justly and usefully angry at the disease, hopeful that something soon will help not just in the future, but in their future. Broken politics, abuses of power. 

Much to mourn, to pray for. Trauern.

I went inside. Ate breakfast. Started my day. Basil is flourishing in my weedy garden. There will be pesto in the freezer soon. I think there's a bulb of fennel to be dug out; I don't know what to do with it.

And that Monarch is on her way.