September 2024 - The Hike

September is a liminal time. Some days, summer still lingers in the air.  Yet, there are other days – increasingly so - when the suddenly chilly winds stir the changing leaves and send us scrambling for our sweaters.  Indeed, along with the inevitable equinox, change is coming; to quote this month’s poem (and its echo of a line by Galway Kinnell), “what we don’t know” - both the wonderful and the not quite so wonderful - is waiting for us in the weeks and months ahead.

The Hike

after a line by Galway Kinnell, and for my son

 by Jason Tandon

We squat

on a bench

missing its middle slat,

tear jerky with our teeth.

What we don’t know

is the fountain a mile off,

the pistol spigot

that will ice

our spines at the root.

What we don’t know

is the sight of the first chalet

sloped above town,

shutters flung wide to the open air,

and the boxes beneath them

frothing with flowers

in the sop

of summer’s heat.

Jason Tandon is the author of five books of poetry, including This Far North (Black Lawrence Press, 2023), longlisted for the 2024 Massachusetts Book Awards, and The Actual World (Black Lawrence Press, 2019). His poems have appeared in many journals, including Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, North American Review, and Alaska Quarterly Review. He teaches at Boston University, where he is a master lecturer in the Arts & Sciences Writing Program.  https://blacklawrencepress.com/books/this-far-north/