Was it Queen Elizabeth who said, “My end is my beginning,” or “My beginning is my end,” but she could have said either; but why are they both so depressing, like the result of leaves that are decaying on the ground and have been run over by the grass cutting tractor, these leaves being ground up for mulch and flying like corn flakes over the grass as the students walk by, already having abandoned summer for the sake of study: reading about the harvest and Keats’s odes has become an assignment, this is their beginning; these corn flakes of leaves will be soggy by morning, the students will be hurried, and their vision will have lost its periphery: that autumn is only the melancholy, visceral wringer it is because we just experienced summer and grass was green and being watered by sprinklers and plenty, plenty was whispered wetly as the sprinkler passed from grass to sidewalk to flowers to grass, and the student who spurred along, careful not to drench Jane Eyre, but not hostile toward the sprinkler because the day was hot and that is the function of summer: to bring one into the present with heat and rain and how these things don’t matter; one cannot be hot in the future or the past; but when one is lying on a mattress on the floor saying, “These are my twenties,” and the fan is blowing, the cat is walking back and forth, in awe of the humming machine, it is definitely now; we used to lie wondering how it got to be late July and whatever fantasies of sex in the grass we bore like precious shopping lists all winter, through snow and cold and loneliness, were, more or less, not being fulfilled, and already the end was near, and we knew that perhaps we were aging; the grass was still outside near the beach; the moon was full, or close enough, but we were aging; we were suddenly finding the cat exceedingly annoying as it sat on the windowsill staring out; perhaps even the love of cats wasn’t what it used to be; oh how could I be resenting a cat? except that (now it’s so obvious) in life everything must be resented sooner or later—even summer—even genitals—though we don’t mean to punish ourselves, God save us if we punish ourselves—but what did she mean “my end is my beginning” except that perhaps “I’ve had it with your wars and roses and chopping off of heads and six wives; perhaps you think I’m different, but I just happened to have a famous father, not more of an ogre or less of one than yours,” and what was it like to have been her and gone to Shakespeare’s theater, a man who saved the harvest so that even now these students are being interrupted by something as they try to attain their end, reading their assignments and hearing Keats speak of autumn and her hair soft-lifted on the grainery floor, if they don’t suddenly stop and become afraid or sad, they will have to struggle to continue, because to feel is still their unconscious goal, even though they don’t see the periphery, forgetting summer and its sweat and fantasies that didn’t get fulfilled, but they can’t help but notice the transformation of the sky at the end of summer, the beginning of autumn, as it climbs up the air, a bright blue so clear that one must stop while walking and stare and fight the desire to be afraid, because the sky has suddenly become the blue of our father’s permanent press shirt and that can only mean one thing ever: that summer is leaving (the air has thinned), and winter is coming, but first we must go through autumn; we must take a deep breath, and even if the others on the sidewalk are still in summer or already in winter, we must say, “This is all I have right now … ” and “Father, I forgive you,” then we will stop thinking of summer, but will walk along breathing in each second as fire swallows a leaf, among many, burning in a pile, swirling up in sparks and ashes and gray, gray smoke, and we burn, but we know it is happening right now.

ANNA SMITH grew up in North Carolina. She now lives and works in a center for Tibetan Buddhism in Northern California.