Point of View: Rejoice

Summer does not so much make a light escape here as a noisy one, so that we, the birds who stay, and who indeed will shiver, rejoice.

Thus the seasons are for us rearranged, and the waning of summer, what for many is a signal of decline, brings promise here.

A photographer friend, who has been shuffling all summer to the numbing rhythms of real estate interests, has been saying for the past three months that he can’t wait for summer to end and for fall to begin, so that he can be freed, somewhat, from exigency, and participate again in the dance of life. That’s why I made note of the high school teams’ first scrimmages and games at the end of this week in my calendar, which ordinarily I would stop at Wednesday.

Soon we will be caught up in so much activity — but of a much more joyful kind than we’ve known of late — that we’ll be able to delight, if not forever, at least for some months to come, in the present.

A Terrible Duty

His world was narrowing, Mary said, and ours was too. He was almost there when he went, at our hands — a terrible duty that this terrible beauty exacts.

The last time at Louse Point, in the golden light, he tugged gently at the leash at the water’s edge, and I wouldn’t let him go, not wanting to be possibly inconvenienced, though I said to myself and others, who could see that he was old, that it was for his own good.

I should have let him, I should have let him go. Forgive me, Henry.

Everything’s so clean and neat now.

And silent.

And empty.

The kitchen floor is bare.

Your eyes were so beautiful, though I hadn’t realized eternity was in them until the day we let you go.