The buzzing of a lawn mower.
The buzzing of a leaf blower.
The buzzing of a motorcycle.
Such are the sounds of a summer day this year.
The buzzing of the cicadas was also there, joining in the summer song, and though they sounded from high in the trees, they were closer than all those other sounds.
They haven’t been singing as much this year. Or maybe I simply didn’t notice them. During the long stretch of 90 degree days we had earlier in the summer, I mostly stayed indoors. Maybe the cicadas sang all their songs then. Now, with less than a week to go before September arrives, I listen to them singing on an afternoon overflowing with sun.
It slants through the foliage of ferns and dogwood leaves, and it is already different than it was in July. Some of its potency has faded. When a cloud obscures it, the warmth instantly departs, unlike high summer, when it held on even through gray and overcast skies. Floating in the pool, I notice the air is cooler than the water. It’s the late August shift that sneaks in through the nights, finally starting to seep into the days. As seen in the browning tips of the ferns, there is no going back now, no way to return to the fresh green of an earlier time, the youth of a season. We have already lost that.
Still, summer lingers. As the sun descends further, the angel’s trumpet begins its own song – a song of scent – and its sweet lemony perfume soon fills the poolside patio as its pendulous peach-colored blooms dangle high in the air.
More buds are forming on its ever-expanding branches, further proof that summer has always insisted on staying through September. Since we got such a late start to having an open pool, we will take summer’s lead and keep it heated through October, savoring every last drop of sunshine shimmering on the water, drawing out the season for as long as possible. We will push fall deeper into winter, hoping to lessen the severity and duration of both. The angels are behind us. They will make it possible.
The buzzing of the cicadas plays on. It is the soundtrack to summer, no matter how strange and upside-down the world feels.
Summer will have its say.
Summer will have its stay.
