It was early on one of the first days of autumn. The temperature had dropped overnight, and the sun had yet to crack the horizon. I was driving through rural York County, part of what had recently become my daily commute, when I approached a rolling field blanketed in fog. By the light of the moon I could faintly make out the silhouettes of dairy cattle scattered about. Further, crumbling tombstones leaned beside a cornfield behind St. Jacob’s Evangelical Lutheran Church. Across the street, St. Jacob’s United Church of Christ advertised a Pot Pie dinner for the coming Tuesday.
I opened the windows. It just felt right—the darkness of the morning, the chill in the air, the almost guilty feeling of seeing something before the rest of the world wakes. The morning seemed to hold loosely in its hands a tension between light and dark, hot and cold, the friction of one season letting go into another.
Those hills and the cows in the pasture, combined with the drama of a day coming to life while the flora dies in preparation of winter, called to mind Plath’s poem, “Sheep in Fog.” I too seemed to be wandering that morning, lost with so much obscuring my path. There’s melancholy in the darkness, in the fog of letting go. But there’s hope too for what you may find just around the bend.
The blackening morning, the fields melting my heart.
With our Fall 2018 edition, we celebrate the subtle beauty of an early autumn morning. We celebrate Sylvia Plath and the exuberance of her work blanketed in an underlying feeling of unease. What is often overlooked, however, is Plath’s craft as an artist and the way she pushed against an industry dominated by men. She’s inspired so many, and it really is a shame we don’t have her voice in these tumultuous times. She would be celebrating her 86th birthday this month, and we can only imagine what Lady Lazarus would have to say.
With Volume 1, Issue 3, “MORNING,” we stare into the fog, and we journey into darkness in search of what we may find around the bend.