Sun and earth conspire: We linger in the autumn light and gather food and thoughts before we turn inward for the shorter days ahead. All living things conspire too. Astronomers, poets, animals and birds know to linger, to change, to move on.

On the great migratory bird route in Nebraska, where my mother lives, our recent phone call was nearly drowned out by thousands of blackbirds stopping to tank up. Soon the butterflies will stop by.

Here in Connecticut, the brilliant goldfinch changes and his gray molt appears. Soon he’ll fit our fall landscape.

I’m molting too: shedding my bathing suit for Patagonia fleece. As I cut back the catmint, the daisies, the almost everything, I leave the billowy heads of joe-pye weed and the sedum for the birds. But the ground is not bare; a little leaf litter never hurts. We all need some cover.

Astronomers track and announce another fall equinox—days and nights are equal in length. Sun and stars hold equal pull. As the autumn stars appear in the sky, I now dream in flannel. But the poets know best how to chronicle the “dying of the light,” and how to corral September’s light.

TO THE LIGHT OF SEPTEMBER W. S. Merwin

When you are already here
you appear to be only
a name that tells of you
whether you are present or not

and for now it seems as though
you are still summer
still the high familiar
endless summer
yet with a glint
of bronze in the chill mornings
and the late yellow petals
of the mullein fluttering
on the stalks that lean
over their broken
shadows across the cracked ground

but they all know

that you have come
the seed heads of the sage
the whispering birds
with nowhere to hide you
to keep you for later

you
who fly with them

you who are neither
before nor after
you who arrive
with blue plums
that have fallen through the night

perfect in the dew

Yes, there is more to say about the slant of the autumn light on the water, the corn, the goldfinch . . .

We see it fade, and we linger for one last swim through the sun-warmed waters to the island to see the turtles stacked like dominoes on the log. And then we pack up.