Here we are, on summer’s threshold, the giant clock that marks fleeting time now ticking a bit more intently. Fittingly, as I write this, early evening light streams in through my kitchen windows, beckoning me out to the porch to catch the purple and pink-hued sky at dusk as it settles over the rooftops. We are one day closer to the end of the school year.
As is our tradition, a poem is shared in this space to mark the year’s ending. While Brendan typically writes this annual message, he generously invited me to share the poem, The Door by Jane Hirshfield, that I will be reading in honor of the eighth grade at their graduation next Friday.
The Door
by Jane Hirshfield
A note waterfalls steadily
through us,
just below hearing.
Or this early light
streaming through dusty glass:
what enters, enters like that,
unstoppable gift
And yet there is also the other,
the breath-space held between any call
and its answer–
In the querying
first scuff of footstep,
the wood-owl’s repeating,
the two-counting heart:
A little sabbath,
minnow whose brightness silvers past time.
The rest-note,
Unwritten,
hinged between worlds,
that precedes change and allows it.
Doors are both symbols of change and openings, over a threshold, into a new day, a moment of anticipation, even a different sense of self. And, on the other side, the day’s closure and a transition into life beyond our campus. During my first year at Belmont Day, I have stood in the doorway of the Schoolhouse on many a morning, ushering students and families into the warmth of this community. In spending that time with you, I have been privy to goodbyes, warm greetings, a moment to collect oneself on the benches, or put on sunscreen before a busy day in the garden on Community Service Day. I have stood by and witnessed the first of many firsts for our youngest students, some of whom may be walking into school on their own for the first time. Standing there, in my parka or now, my sandals, I have experienced the act of seeing and being seen. I have learned your names, greeted you with a smile or an early morning joke, received your kindness, and watched our community move into a new day.
May we carry those moments with us as we move through another door–into the second week of June, and soon, the start of summer rhythms. And, for our eighth graders, a threshold into a new chapter.
For now, I am reveling in the in-between, a certain kind of “rest-note,’ in Hirshfield’s words, before next week’s Moving Up Assembly and graduation ceremony.
I will see you on the threshold, BDS!