long day's journey to the end of summer

tho it really never felt like summer to me. maybe it was because the weather had been so mild. maybe it's because i'm a grown man and those easy, breezy days of long nothings are way behind me. maybe it's because we didn't make it to the drive-in movies -tho b. and i have made tentative plans for next weekend to go to the drive-ins.

whatever the case we tried to make the most of it today. we spent a few hours at the public pool where we have season passes. we all have deep tans acquired from hours spent poolside and in the chlorinated waters. i read for about an hour in the back garden before we left. a memoir by the poet alex lemon. i read a chapbook published in i think black warrior review a couple years ago and enjoyed the poems. i think that's the name of the journal but i'm too lazy right now to get up off my behind and search for it among the stacks. i'm on a memoir fix i guess. i just finished nick flynn's book about post-911 paranoia and torture and fatherhood, the ticking is the bomb. i've not read flynn's poetry but for the odd poem here and there. i had read flynn's first prose book, another bullshit night in suck city, which i didn't care for. just the same, flynn has a winning voice and his fatherhood book is quite good. as for lemon's book it's too early to tell but i have a soft spot for poetic fuck-ups so we'll see how this one goes.

what is even more strange about this summer is how the three months of hot weather passed and i didn't watch one beach movie. usually, summer ain't summer if i don't see frankie avalon and annette funicello do their thing. that again might account for why summer this go round didn't feel all that summery.

whatever the case. summer is done. the light's changed. soon the days and nights will grow colder. already the stores and shops are setting up for halloween. that puts a bounce in my step. i'm no longer a boy of summer. i am a man of autumn, and winter. perhaps that goes with my advancing age, even if i still feel pretty damn youthful. no wonder then that the end of summer is a still drop while the beginning of fall is a leap of joy.