Given that SE Australia has just been subjected to mid-April highland snow, followed by a record-breaking May heat-wave I revisited the following I first wrote in April over 20 years ago …

Autumn has been warm, a lingering of summer beyond the end of late evenings into the shortening days which herald the coming of winter. Calm sunny days have been interspersed with short periods of gales and frigid showers, the precursors of winter.

One morning, as I examined the weather map in the paper, I sensed a tension in the air, as if a great battle is being enacted out across the spaciousness of these Southern lands and oceans …

 

The Gods of Summer and Winter are battling

for a change of the seasons.

 It’s Autumn!

 A high-pressure ridge extends down the eastern seaboard.

At its centre there is calm, a balmy and benign peace.

Lows to the south-west thrust fronts northwards,

with jagged fangs threatening

the bitter bite of Winter’s cold.

 

For now, hot strong winds roar from the north,

the sun desiccates the land, fires burn.

The God of Summer exerts a last tenuous hold!

But inexorably, inevitably, change will come.

 

As the wind strengthens, clouds gather

around the mountain behind the city.

Suddenly, the wind ceases!

A warm, humid and clammy hand descends

on the landscape, adding to a deepening dusk.

 

With the fading of the light the wind shifts – to the south!

Icy squalls race up the river while

freezing showers dash down the mountain valleys

and across the city.

 

Diners and theatre goers exit their warm shelter,

collars turned up against Winter’s bite,

and hurry homewards as another cycle

begins in an interminable battle,

a see-sawing quest for balance between

irreconcilable and incompatible opposites.

  

Thoughts turn to the Winter months ahead,

with long nights, dull days, and bitter winds,

or to the times of four seasons in one day

when south-westerlies rule our lives,

cleansing the air we breath, and our hearts.

 

A time when Earth retreats into herself,

a time for reflection, renewal,

and the reconciliation of opposites.

 

Peter Sands

Late April 1994 and 2026.