At the end of August, a tailwind tugs
At the slim strings of returning students.
Empty ketchup bottles, burnt marshmallow
Sticks and empty otter pop wrappers now
Start to age into their unique twilights.
Fewer children at the park this evening;
Getting chilly earlier and dark soon.
Those who fight the hardest here are the bugs
Who wish to bite each child before parents
Tell kids to go home. Something in these nights
Is near comforting, like Wordsworth’s “soothing
Thoughts that spring out of human suffering.” [1]
Or Emily’s line—“after great pain, a
Formal feeling comes.” [2] Tonight, a full moon.
-Paul Ringo
1 Wordsworth, Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood; Lines 188 – 189
2 Dickinson
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