Monday Morning Musing: Labor Day & Other Endings

Labor Day marks the unofficial ending of summer for those of us in the United States. Where I live, though not in all places, children will return to school this week. My grandmother always put away her white clothes and shoes, a fashion nod to this turn in time. The stores have had Halloween (and even Christmas) items on their shelves since July.

My birthday is often on or around this long weekend, as it was this year, giving our family the chance to gather and celebrate together, which was such a gift.

And Labor Day, as the name indicates, reminds us of the value of our labors and gives us an extra day to rest from them. It also reminds us of the worth of each person's labors, no matter the particularities of that work. And we are urged on in our pursuit of safe working conditions and a just and fair wage for all.

Rachel Hadas' poem The End of Summer captures a bit of how we are living in these late summer days of transition. She notes our watchfulness for war, the ways words are used as weapons, and that we are "harangued by the one clamorous voice", leaving us to determine whose voice that is. My favorite line in this work is when she notes that he we have the choice to be "tranquil as the neighbor's cow." I must confess, I'd have to work hard to achieve that level of ease, but it seems that it might be worth a try.

The End of Summer

Sweet smell of phlox drifting across the lawn--

an early warning of the end of summer.

August is fading fast, and by September

the little purple flowers will all be gone.

Season, project, and vacation done.

One more year in everybody's life.

Add a notch to the old hunting knife

Time keeps testing with a horny thumb.

Over the summer months hung an unspoken

aura of urgency. In late July

galactic pulsing filled the midnight sky

like silent screaming, so that, strangely woken,

we looked at one another in the dark,

then at the milky magical debris

arcing across, dwarfing our meek mortality.

There were two ways to live: get on with work,

redeem the time, ignore the imminence

of cataclysm; or else take it slow,

be as tranquil as the neighbors' cow

we love to tickle through the barbed wire fence

(she paces through her days in massive innocence,

or, seeing green pastures, we imagine so.)

In fact, not being cows, we have no choice.

Summer or winter, country, city, we

are prisoners from the start and automatically,

hemmed in, harangued by the one clamorous voice. Not light but language shocked us out of sleep

ideas of doom transformed to meteors

we translate back to portents of the wars

looming above the nervous watch we keep.