One Day in September

There was something incongruous, one might say sacrilegious, about the black wrought-iron sign that stood out conspicuously against the cloudless blue sky. I remembered the words of Oscar Wilde in his poem "The Ballad of Reading Gaol", in which he refers to "that little tent of blue that prisoners call the sky". On that warm afternoon in September, dappled sunlight fell upon the bare earth, leaves were beginning to turn yellow and songbirds had not yet migrated south.