Why does summer seem to slide by so effortlessly, almost without notice? You wake up one morning and it’s Memorial Day, and the next morning it’s Labor Day. Where did it go? Winter isn’t like that. Winter is a cold, miserable slog lasting not weeks or months but eons, eras. There is no interval between everlasting winter and evanescent summer, and only Labor Day separates the evanescent summer from winter’s eternal snow and sleet and cold, biting wind.

Yes children love the falling snow
But when it gets to ten below
The blood congeals, reflexes slow
So man invented naps
The days creep by as cold winds blow
And on the windows crystals grow
While newsmen spin their tales of woe
And show us on their maps
And then one day we see a bird
As from a tree a call is heard
And suddenly, without a word
The winter season snaps
And in its place the sky once gray
Turns blue and kids come out to play
And fields turn green with corn and hay
And summer’s here, perhaps
You turn your head as if to say
I don’t remember leaving May
And when you look it’s Labor Day
With summer Nature’s lapse
Then suddenly there’s falling snow
With banshee shrieks the cold winds blow
And up the stairs I slowly go
Thank goodness for the schnapps