August’s Liminal Heat: Sylvia Plath, Sara Baume, and Sue Monk Kidd on the Season’s Edge
Today's Garden Words were featured on The Daily Gardener podcast:
Words inspired by the garden are the sweetest,
most beautiful words of all.
August 16, 2019
August holds a unique, almost paradoxical place in the rhythm of the year — a time when the brilliance of summer reaches its peak even as the shadow of fall begins to lengthen.
Poets and writers have long captured this bittersweet quality, giving voice to the season’s heat, change, and quiet farewell.
Sylvia Plath’s words resonate deeply:
“August rain: the best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born.
The odd uneven time.”
This phrase captures August’s liminal space, the delicate balance between what has been and what is yet to come.
It is both an ending and a beginning, a tension between fullness and anticipation.
Sara Baume reflects on the sun’s lingering presence in August:
“This morning, the sun endures past dawn.
I realize that it is August: the summer's last stand.”
Her image of the sun stretching itself beyond the expected time embodies the season’s determination to hold on to warmth and light just a little longer.
And Sue Monk Kidd’s vivid metaphor paints August as a griddle ablaze with sizzling days:
“The month of August had turned into a griddle where the days just lay there and sizzled.”
This captures the season’s palpable heat and heavy stillness — a slow, immersive experience that demands attention and acceptance.
Together, these poetic reflections invite us to appreciate August as a month of intense presence — where every ray of sun, every passing shower, and every late summer breeze is saturated with meaning.
For gardeners and nature lovers, August is the last great blaze of growth and color, the time to savor the harvest, and prepare for the quieter, cooler seasons ahead.