Maybe today's the day it won't warm up.
Goldenrod burns fall's first fire.
Doorways and front stoops sing
pumpkins and mums, pumpkins and mums.

The woodchuck waddles low across driveway
from grass to grass.
Everything's green, though yellow lurks
beneath the visual spectrum, waiting.

Listen: there's the rise
and fall, rise and fall I wait for,
breath half-held. One of these days
I'll forget there should've been sound.

Three months and the wind will whisk snow
against windowpanes, but today:
breathe warming dirt, the lawn's wild thyme.
The woodchuck munches, focused, getting ready.

This is a revision of a poem which I wrote ten years ago. In 2005 it became part of a manuscript called Manna which I sent around to first-book contests for some years. I had thought that this poem had appeared in The Berkshire Review, but my records show other poems in that journal during that time, not this one. Anyway: I find myself thinking of the "pumpkins and mums" line every year at this season, so I dug up the poem and did a bit of polishing and am sharing it here in honor of the equinox. Hope y'all enjoy.

For those who are so inclined, here's the traditional blessing for the tekufah, the equinox (which comes from Talmud):

Blessing for the Tekufah / Equinox        
 ברוך אתה ה' אלהינו מלך העולם עושה בראשית
Baruch atah Adonai, eloheinu melech ha'olam, oseh vereishit.
Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Source of all being, who makes creation.