End of Summer

For more years than I can remember, I have marked the end of summer with a trip to VA Beach over Labor Day weekend. If all the planets align correctly, I am only delayed a handful of hours in some airport on my way there and actually get to enjoy a few days of a particular brand of summer magic. This consists of sun, sand, US Open tennis (best seats in the house are right in front of the TV, as my dad always says), catching up with family, and eating until we are about to bust. The planets did indeed align for me on this trip, and after a wonderful long weekend in Virginia, I have returned to Nashville a little down in the dumps. It is hard to leave paradise. It is hard to accept the end of summer, too. And that is why I was so thrilled to find this poem while stuck in the airport on Friday, which captures that end of summer mood perfectly. I also remember feeling this way when I lived in New York. Suddenly I would turn the corner or look up at the sky and fall would have slipped up on me. The light weakens, the air is cooler, the mood has changed.

n.b.: Some people actually read the short stories in the New Yorker. I can't count myself among them. However, I am all over the poetry, which is where I found the one below....

"End of Summer"
by James Richardson

Just an uncommon lull in the traffic
so you hear some guy in an apron, sleeves rolled up,
with his brusque sweep brusque sweep of the sidewalk,
and the slap shut of a too thin rental van,
and I told him no a gust has snatched from a conversation
and brought to you, loud.
It would be so different
if any of these were missing is the feeling
you always have on the first day of autumn,
no, the first day you think of autumn, when somehow

the sun singling out high windows,
a waiter settling a billow of white cloth
with glasses and silver, and the sparrows
shattering to nowhere are the Summer
waving that here is where it turns
and will no longer be walking with you,

traveller, who now leave all of this behind,
carrying only what it has made of you.
Already the crowds seem darker and more hurried
and the slang grows stranger and stranger,
and you do not understand what you love,
yet here, rounding a corner in mild sunset,
is the world again, wide-eyed as a child
holding up a toy even you can fix.
How light your step
down the narrowing avenue to the cross streets,
October, small November, barely legible December.

Link to poem in this week's New Yorker