Summer's End

This is that time of year when melancholy for the endless days' ending mixes with the heady beginnings of the new school year. We don't use chalk any longer here at Suffolk -- it's all whiteboards and markers now. But the smell of chalk is the aroma that means school to me still, and that's what I think of when I think of starting a new school year. Rinse out the chlorine and salt water, and get ready for chalk, markers, and new faces!

I searched for a poem about the end of summer. I could not find one that covered everything I am feeling right now. Law school, especially here at Suffolk, begins so far before summer really is ending that poems about the end of summer, like Emily Dickinson's "Indian Summer" (from About.com's Women's History section), aren't really appropriate. She writes, in part,

These are the days when birds come back,
A very few, a bird or two,
To take a backward look.

These are the days when skies put on
The old, old sophistries of June, -
A blue and gold mistake.

But we are still watching the birds enjoy their post-fledging jubilee, even here in New England. That time, when the birds are done feeding their nestlings, defending territories, and just hang out in rowdy crowds, waiting for the berries to be gone, gorging and twittering in bunches. Only law school professors, librarians and administrators are shoving their flip-flops in the back of the closet and strapping on their school day uniforms. I wish I could turn back the clock -- I wish I could rush the year a tad forward. Today, we are teetering between the seasons, waiting to kick off another schoolyear's orientation.

The photo of the nearly deserted beach, is courtesy of modernpictorials.com