Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.*
The Autumn Equinox arrives on Thursday, September 22, 2022, at 9:04 P.M. EDT in the Northern Hemisphere and occurs at the same moment worldwide. On the first day of fall in the Northern Hemisphere, the Earth is perfectly aligned sideways to the Sun, or in other words, the Sun will be exactly above Earth's equator, moving from north to south. As a result, day and night will be nearly equal in length, throughout the world. Equinox is usually thought of as a phenomenon lasting an entire day. However, it is a single moment in time, when the Sun crosses the celestial equator, which is an imaginary line in the sky above Earth's equator.
This idea of “single moment in time” offering a perfect alignment of our planet with the sun, seems reassuring. It is almost a fresh start as we leave a long, hot summer of torrential rains, flooding, wildfires, tornadoes, war, famine, and lingering pandemic. We look forward to the Harvest Moon, All Souls’ Day, and Thanksgiving, gatherings without masks or a need for social distance. Day and night are equal, and the harmony of the spheres will be restored in a single moment.
Over the past seven months we have held our collective breaths as Ukraine is under siege, a nuclear plant is threatened, a new strain of COVID spreads, and our country seems irrevocably divided, with violence and rage on the rise. “Things fall apart.”
With the start of autumn, we pray that the drought and fires will not prevent a rich harvest. We hope supply chain issues will bring that harvest of food and goods to our markets; we hope inflation will abate. We hope our new normal may be more normal.
Perhaps, the worst is over, and we can be grateful for all we have and for a new season. A single moment in time when things are balanced and aligned. A fresh start.
*The Second Coming, by the Irish Poet William Butler Yeats was published in 1920, two years after the devastation of World War I. Yeats believed that history had reached the end of the outer gyre and was moving along the inner gyre toward an apocalyptic revelation. Yeats believed that the gradual changes occurring in the intersecting gyres were symbolized by the phases of the moon.