Used to be kids went home to the farm to help with the harvest. Planting and then harvesting and then back to school. And yet we no longer have any type of Agrarian Cycle at all. We just have the grocery store and the belief that summer is for kids to be off school and fall is for the return of school. My whole life up until I was twenty four was governed by this cycle. June was for going home and leaving the cinder blocked incarceration of dusty erasers and lead pencils and the smell of mimeographed sheets.
Summer was to go on forever. In June there is no belief that fall will come. School will not resume. There will only be summer forever. And the empty school lot proved the point. The teachers had all disappeared too and the school stood empty with the flag pole rope flapping for no one. Only the janitor was still there and I would ride by on my bike and see him there smoking a cigarette out by the back door. The last remaining soldier.
But the fall did come back and suddenly we were back in the classroom .And so it still is. Next week all the kids will return and the adults will continue their same day in day out routine. And the kids will begin their cycle again until one day they too will leave for good. And they may stare out the window and sigh as the last days of summer expire on the hot pavement and think they will be lucky one day to be free of the old Agrarian cycle.
Never knowing how lucky they are to be on that old clock.
The Pitcher...sometimes a dream is all you have
Summer was to go on forever. In June there is no belief that fall will come. School will not resume. There will only be summer forever. And the empty school lot proved the point. The teachers had all disappeared too and the school stood empty with the flag pole rope flapping for no one. Only the janitor was still there and I would ride by on my bike and see him there smoking a cigarette out by the back door. The last remaining soldier.
But the fall did come back and suddenly we were back in the classroom .And so it still is. Next week all the kids will return and the adults will continue their same day in day out routine. And the kids will begin their cycle again until one day they too will leave for good. And they may stare out the window and sigh as the last days of summer expire on the hot pavement and think they will be lucky one day to be free of the old Agrarian cycle.
Never knowing how lucky they are to be on that old clock.
The Pitcher...sometimes a dream is all you have
