The world is strangely silent now. Oh, I know wars still rage and suits still bark at the suitless and the well-perfumed clippety-clop heels still resonate in Grand Central Terminal. The cars and trucks still roll by my Brooklyn apartment all hours of the night. A comely Polish waitress still asks me what I’m reading as I dig into bacon and eggs. Youtube still provides hours of mindless reliving of youth. Sports talk radio still provides a background for a restless night’s sleep. Golf still beckons one to the course for one more joust for glory before winter clamps down.
But something is missing now. It’s the cicadas. My brothers and I used to catch them and fly them around on a string.
Only yesterday, it seems, the throaty mating call (if that is what it is) hummed through the trees of summer, a comforting murmur as one strolled in shorts and a golf shirt. Now the long pants must come out, a jacket must be at hand to guard against the winds of change. ‘Tis “the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,” Mr. Keats penned. But I must object. ‘Tis the season of sadness and loss. Why, I am hitting the driver on par threes and not hitting the green. One must acknowledge his limitations.
If one is a student, fall is a time of hope, a chance to be better, a new chapter. I remember this. But if one is in his dotage, and I speak for myself, it is a melancholy season, a time to regret chances lost. Summer contains the seeds of its own demise, as God planned it. Let’s see if the Rockies can sweep the Dodgers.
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