the rasping sound of cicada wings
from the trees their clarion call:
"Here comes fall. Here comes fall."
and soft upon the evening winds
the insistent cricket chant begins
from the darkness comes the song:
"Summer's gone. Summer's gone."
-August 2006
It's a feeling I get every August. A feeling of sadness. Sad that summer is on it's last legs, like a guest who can't take a hint that it's time to go home. It's time has passed, although the humidity and the high temperatures remain, we all know that it's on its way out. No matter how much fun I think I've had in summer, I always feel a bit cheated when it passes. The cicadas in August always remind me of this.
Earlier in the evening, those damn cicadas were going crazy with that maddening buzzing. Later that night, after the pooch and I had done our prerequisite round of the neighborhood, this feeling of sadness came upon me. Those words formed almost as a prayer.
It was always the cicadas that reminded me that it was time to return to college. I know that returning to college doesn't sound like an occasion of sadness, but to me there was a bittersweetness to it all. Sure, old friends reunited was exciting, but then the true horrors of living in Bonar Hall (yes that was the real name) were enough to make your blood chill. I lived among the barbaric hoardes in that hall-all those monsterous frat boys. The worst were the TKEs. They were the most evil of all fraternities at West Liberty State College. They were not kind to artistic music types like me. Let's just say they were openly hostile.
It was always the cicadas that reminded me that it was time to return to college. I know that returning to college doesn't sound like an occasion of sadness, but to me there was a bittersweetness to it all. Sure, old friends reunited was exciting, but then the true horrors of living in Bonar Hall (yes that was the real name) were enough to make your blood chill. I lived among the barbaric hoardes in that hall-all those monsterous frat boys. The worst were the TKEs. They were the most evil of all fraternities at West Liberty State College. They were not kind to artistic music types like me. Let's just say they were openly hostile.
But all those days are gone (Ten Year Rule ?), but still that sense of sadness remains when summer turns to fall. I know by late September, with guitar students to teach, that summer will be a vague memory.
I think Robert Frost would agree as these are his words on the subject:
Ah, when to the heart of man was it ever less than treason
To go with the drift of things, to yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end of a love or a season?
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