Emily Dickinson’s Two Beginnings: June Remembered Through Autumn’s Eyes

June 17, 1877

On this day in the fall of 1877, Emily Dickinson was reflecting — as all true gardeners eventually must — not upon what rises, but upon what gracefully fades.

Autumn, with its quiet dignity, offers the poet and the gardener the same bittersweet view: that every bloom we cherished in June has left its echo lingering in the air.

Dickinson’s thoughts turn tenderly backward, toward June — the season of promise — even as she writes from October, the season of remembrance.

“Summer has two Beginnings --
Beginning once in June --
Beginning in October
Affectingly again --”

How perfect her intuition! For does not the gardener experience precisely this dual beginning?

Once with the riotous green rush of early summer, and once again, in fall, when memory and melancholy conspire to make us see it anew.

The “beginning in October” is not of leaves or stems, but of thought — an inward resurrection of summer’s sweetest hours.

The trowel rests, but the heart still digs.

She continues,

“Without, perhaps, the Riot
But graphicker for Grace --
As finer is a going
Than a remaining Face --”

There is profound truth in this for gardeners. June flaunts her abundance — roses, bees, laughter at twilight — but autumn teaches grace.

The falling leaf, like a departing friend, leaves behind a deeper beauty, one born of presence remembered.

Grace in the garden never shouts; it whispers through seed pods, empty nests, and russet borders swaying like faded lace.

And then that haunting close —

“Departing then -- forever --
Forever -- until May --
Forever is deciduous
Except to those who die --”

Forever, she reminds us, is seasonal. The promise of return is bound to the rhythm of the soil, and to the gardener’s ever-hopeful heart.

Dickinson’s faith was not in permanence, but in renewal — a soft agreement between loss and life. Each fallen petal writes a vow: we will bloom again.

My friend and fellow podcaster, Joanne Shaw, once said,

“A piece of our heart is in all our gardens.”

Indeed, it is.

And perhaps that is why Dickinson reached back to June from October — because every gardener knows that love lingers long after the last flower fades.

June never truly leaves; she only slips quietly into memory, waiting, patient as a seed, for May’s gentle call.

In the hush of fall, when the last marigold sighs, we do not mourn the end of summer. We listen — for in the rustle of dry leaves, June is whispering still.