{"id":5393,"date":"2014-08-31T10:46:28","date_gmt":"2014-08-31T15:46:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/Trees\/?p=5393"},"modified":"2014-09-02T06:59:57","modified_gmt":"2014-09-02T11:59:57","slug":"august-ends-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/Trees\/?p=5393","title":{"rendered":"August Ends Here"},"content":{"rendered":"

August 31, 2014<\/strong>
\nSunday<\/strong><\/p>\n

An agitation of the air<\/em>
\n A perturbation of the light<\/em>
\n Admonished me the unloved year<\/em>
\n Would turn on its hinge that night.<\/em><\/p>\n

I stood in the disenchanted field<\/em>
\n Amid the stubble and the stones,<\/em>
\n Amazed, while a small worm lisped to me<\/em>
\n The song of my marrow-bones.<\/em><\/p>\n

Blue poured into summer blue<\/em>
\n A hawk broke from his cloudless tower,<\/em>
\n The roof of the silo blazed, and I knew<\/em>
\n That part of my life was over.<\/em><\/p>\n

Already the iron door of the north<\/em>
\n Clangs open: birds, leaves, snows<\/em>
\n Order their populations forth,<\/em>
\n And a cruel wind blows.<\/em>
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u201d “End of Summer”
\nStanley Kunitz, 1905-2006
\nAmerican poet<\/p>\n

I was going to quote only the first two lines of Stanley Kunitz’s poem, as an epigraph, a signifier of change, ignoring some of the darker images, the references to “the unloved year,” “the iron door of the north clang[ing] open,” “the cruel wind.” But now I think I should just let it stand, a sigh for a period in my life that is now over.<\/p>\n

The school year remains an organizing principle in my life, despite the fact that I have been out of the classroom for more than fifteen years and my daughter for six. The Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference is the hinge of my year. Time stops then. I move through the various activities focused only on the task or subject at hand — lecture, workshop, reading, meal. I begin conversations that get interrupted. I sit down to a library computer and find myself looking at a stranger’s Facebook page or Gmail in-box because she hasn’t logged out. During a class that bores me nearly senseless, I write the numbers 1 through 30 down my page, draw a bell at the bottom, and start crossing off the minutes as they tick by, like my friend Mary did in physics class in high school.<\/p>\n

I stayed in Vermont for three days after the end of the conference, taking some time to look at the leaves and the light, think about where I’d been and where I might be going, as a writer, a reader, a wife and mother and friend. This morning I went to church for the first time all summer. We sang the Loud Boiling Test Tubes<\/a> song.<\/p>\n

August ends here. The iron door of the north beckons. Let’s get busy.<\/p>\n


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