The Nights are Drawing In

Summer Time Ends

How nice looking up, some cloudy afternoon,
To see that what has fallen suddenly
Is twilight, and an earlier chance to draw
The curtains while you have the energy.

Now everything falls, go down with it and give
Yourself to the gravity, putting up a show
Of warming wistfulness with the last leaves.
Fall hard, and stay there, waiting for the snow.

The nights are drawing in, nothing wrong with that.
The poet says: Darkness cures what day inflicts.*
It is as normal to welcome winter back
As to loathe the spring. Popular interdicts

May forbid that preference, but snow walks are like
Illicit love with no one else betrayed;
Are like the joy, as you step out through the white,
Of the first alligator in the first everglade.

Harden your skin, then, for the rigorous spell
Between October and the April days
When the clocks go wrong again. Live for the thought
Of the bracing dark and the heavenly displays,

On frosty nights, of dotty groups of stars
You may sit and try to specify all night
-- As if there were no tomorrow to dissolve
Their shining in dull anywheres of light.

~ Alan Brownjohn (b 1931)

Poem included in the anthology:
Light Unlocked: Christmas Poems (p 13)

* “For darkness restores what light cannot repair.”
~ Joseph Brodsky (1940 - 96)

Editor's note: in England "Daylight Saving Time" is called "British Summer Time"

Blogger's note: "Arizona and Hawaii are now the only states that don't observe daylight savings time." Indiana used to be on this list, until 2005 or so, when (un)popular opinion dictated that we perpetually align ourselves with New York rather than Chicago.

For a long time, Indiana didn't change, and I loved those years, even though it meant half the year we were on New York time, and half the year we were on Chicago time. Then our governor decided that we needed to be permanently aligned with New York City, so now we have to change to Daylight Time every spring. Bummer! On the other hand, I do love those long late summer & autumn evenings. I think I value them more than a bright waking hour. I don't mind waking up in the dark, but I truly relish the gloaming!