If April is the cruellest month (it isn’t, it’s February*) and December the darkest September is at once – at least here in the North – both the freshest and scariest. The dark is approaching but not yet here. The last embers of summer glimmer warmly and yet the shadows lengthen.
It is the month not of Death but the Five of Swords. It is when the rebirth at Easter springs into adulthood. Harvest continues for most of the month, the Earth no longer pregnant but fulfilled, offering its produce for… what?
What will we do with the calories? Where will we go from here? The time for gestation is past; the time of death is ahead. What will you do now?
In New York, the summer has been relatively cool, the nights comfortable, the heat brief. This is weather for tiny grapes and small tomatoes, less-abundant fruits and frugal harvest. You have come from the market, your large basket only half-full as you winnow the choicest from sad piles.
Michaelmas approaches, the archangel marking both summer’s end and the beginning of the great struggle. He rides in the saddle of your soul, champion and general; where will you lead him in the fight?
Reach in to the basket; taste the small hard tomato. Its sweetness will astonish you. Tread out the grapes and you will have thick, powerful wine; the flavours of earth and sugar concentrated in the gummy pulp. Use it for port, for brandy; let its fire bloom.
Pour out that wine for the world. Launch your army to love and help people. Make beauty. Death dark cold is coming; face it with the distilled sweetness of this harvest; hold to the fire so that when the Light comes again, we’re here to greet him.
*Tony Campbell of blessed memory used to call February “take a Negro to lunch month” which tells you why I liked him. I simply find the month cold and angry.
Program notes from the edge 