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Fall Back: Central Standard Time

Already it is dark: the falling arc
Of each advancing year, when the eager moon,
To catch the setting sun, comes up too soon.
Full light no longer lingers at high noon,
Or loiters there long past our long day’s work,
But languishes at waning afternoon:
Sunset’s at six, then five, then four o’clock.

The day appears to finish prematurely;
We’re turning kitchen lights on much too early.
The hour is young; the sun, about to swoon,
Has barely time—because of earth’s strange quirk
Of turning on its oddly-tilted axis—
To paint the sky its customary pink
Before we look outside, before we think
About how long ago the summer solstice
Extended day. Now, waking in the dark,
We know this year is wholly past its prime:
We’ve fallen back to Central Standard Time.

from Notes on Time

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Cynthia Erlandson is a poet and fitness professional living in Michigan.  Her third collection of poems, Foundations of the Cross and Other Bible Stories, was released in July, 2024 by Wipf and Stock Publishers.  Her other collections are These Holy Mysteries and Notes on Time.  Her poems have also appeared in First Things, Modern Age, The North American Anglican, The Orchards Poetry Review, The Book of Common Praise hymnal, The Catholic Poetry Room, and elsewhere.

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19 Responses

  1. Warren Bonham

    We get an extra hour of sleep but falling back to standard time has never been my favorite thing to do. I’m a big fan of daylight. As a result, I admire the Arctic Tern. This species migrates from the North to the South Pole, so they never experience days ending prematurely. On the other hand, that sounds like a lot of work and they never get to experience the sky being painted its customary pink. Fantastic work!

    Reply
  2. Roy Eugene Peterson

    I consider daylight savings time an archaic institution, although it is easy enough to turn our clocks forward and backward each year. Your beautiful poem about the changes to daylight and darkness is well tuned and well rhymed, as well as reminding us to fall back to standard time on November 3rd this year. I had not been paying attention and had to look it up.

    Reply
    • Cynthia Erlandson

      I, too, have yet to change my clocks; that is a ceremony for this evening.

      Thank you for your kind comments, Roy.

      Reply
  3. Isabella

    Your poem has an effortless flow and rhythm and the rhymes are inspired! I thoroughly enjoyed every line. Winter solstice is not too far off, a long slow process but we do start to gain the light again.

    Reply
    • Cynthia Erlandson

      Thank you, Isabella. I am dismayed at this time of year, when daylight hours are shorter and shorter. Long days are my favorite thing about summer.

      Reply
  4. jd

    Amazing, the way your words fall into place, Cynthia. They seem effortless but I have no doubt much mental work is involved.

    Reply
    • Cynthia Erlandson

      Thanks much, jd. I’m very happy that the words flow for you. This is one I wrote quite a long time ago, so I don’t recall how long it took; but Time is a major obsessive theme for me, so perhaps it wasn’t one of the most difficult ones I’ve written.

      Reply
  5. Paul A. Freeman

    I recall with nostalgia the change in daylight hours, most useful in temperate climes rather than here in Saharan Africa, just 21 degrees north of the equator, where over the year daylight hours vary from eleven and a half, to twelve and a half hours over the year.

    Thanks for the read, Cynthia (in temperate Michigan).

    I loved the swooning sun, by the way, and the literary spin you give to scientific principles.

    Reply
    • Cynthia Erlandson

      Thank you so much for your comments, Paul! Perhaps the consistency of the hours where you are has some advantages.

      Reply
  8. Joseph S. Salemi

    There are some very interesting effects in this poem, and one has to read it aloud a few times to catch all of them.

    The internal rhyme of “dark” and “arc” in the first line, and the assonance of “year” and “eager” in the second line, are easy to notice (this second assonance is made possible by the necessary metrical elision of “the” and “eager”). Then there is the B rhyme of “moon, soon, and noon” in the three lines that follow, each of which employs triple alliteration:

    setting… sun… soon
    light… longer… lingers
    loiters… long… long

    and the B rhyme is picked up with “afternoon,” placed between “work” and “o
    ‘clock,” which might be taken as slant rhymes with “dark … arc” at the beginning.

    The second section does a few similar tricks: the slant rhyme of “prematurely” and “early”, and that of “axis” and “solstice.” And in this second section, note that there is a completely enjambed single sentence that takes up lines 3 to 9.

    And all of it is in perfect iambic pentameter. Quite a feat!

    Reply
    • Cynthia Erlandson

      I’m thrilled that you like this poem enough to analyze its effects in this much detail, Joseph! I think this one was from the Muse (as in Roy’s poem yesterday). I suppose it’s always easier (and fun!) to write on themes one finds fascinating, like Time.
      Thank you very much!

      Reply
  9. Margaret Coats

    Cynthia, what I find most intriguing here is thematic interplay between celestial and terrestrial, with human beings as observers of both. We do live in the terrestrial sphere, but can see and reflect upon reasons above for our experience of time changes. As you note, seasonal motions of the earth, causing days to lengthen and shorten, would happen regardless of the arbitrary assignment of hours. I too like longer days, and feel unease at the natural closing of a year, but at my latitude, the time change so far has only moved brightness from evening to morning. As morning hours are always golden, I like having more of them for a while.

    Reply
  10. Cynthia Erlandson

    Thank you, Margaret. I like your observation of the “interplay between celestial and terrestrial”. I think it goes along with the idea that humans live with one foot in each of two worlds. I recently re-ran across Edwin Muir’s “One Foot in Eden”, which I think is a brilliant poem, and also rings with the theme of Time, and with realizations that we have a constant longing to go back to Eden.

    Reply
  11. BDW

    I am reminded of Tennyson in reading these iambic pentameters on Central Standard Time; though it is
    Donne that comes to mind, in the handling of the “celestial and terrestrial”–an interesting focus.

    Reply

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