The Days of Summer

I can feel them winding down. 

The days are shortening, made apparent by evening's long shadows arriving during my drive home from work and the recent chilly, sweater-clad, dog-walking mornings.  Even in the warmth of the afternoon, we're beginning to feel the briskness in the air when the wind comes.  Sadly, the lightning bugs have departed.

We've had a pretty warm summer this year. I spent plenty of sticky evenings longing for more than a fan to cool the house.  Yet, I'm not sure I'm ready to part with it.  Was it long enough?  Didn't it just get here? Why are all these parents talking about the first day of school already?  Is it cliche to ask, "Where does the time go?"  Because, really, where does it go?

The clock doesn't seem to spin so wildly when it's 3:00 and I'm eager for 5:30 to arrive, but before I know it, it's the weekend, then its the first of another month, another year.  We celebrate first birthdays and first school days and milestone anniversaries... and the mirror reveals that the decades are spilling one into another.  And wasn't it just yesterday when...

Ohhh... all I really meant to say was it's become obvious to me that, here in these Green Mountains of Vermont, August is the threshold between summer and autumn.

"When summer gathers up her robes of glory, and like a dream of beauty glides away."
- Sarah Helen Power Whitman


"Whilst August yet wears her golden crown,
Ripening fields lush- bright with promise;
Summer waxes long, then wanes, quietly passing
Her fading green glory on to riotous Autumn."
- Michelle L. Thieme, August's Crown