Dar Williams: End of the summer

The summer ends and we wonder where we are And there you go, my friends, with your boxes in your car And you both look so young And last night was hard, you said You packed up every room And then you cried and went to bed But today you closed the door and said "We have to get a move on. It's just that time of year when we push ourselves ahead, We push ourselves ahead." And it was cloudy in the morning And it rained as you drove away And the same things looked different It's the end of the summer It's the end of the summer, When you move to another place And I feel like the neighbor's girl who will never be the same She walked alone all spring, She had a boyfriend when the summer came And he gave her flowers in a lightning storm They disappeared at night in green fields of silver corn And sometime in July she just forgot that he was leaving So when the fields were dying, she held on to his sleeves She held on to his sleeves And she doesn't want to let go 'Cause she won't know what she's up against The classrooms and the smart girls It's the end of the summer It's the end of the summer When you hang your flowers up to dry And I had a dream it blows the autumn through my head It felt like the first day of school But I was going to the moon instead And I walked down the hall With the notebooks they got for me My dad led me through the house My mom drank instant coffee And I knew that I would crash But I didn't want to tell them There are just some moments when your family makes sense They just make sense So I raised up my arms and my mother put the sweater on We walked out on the dark and frozen grass The end of the summer It's the end of the summer When you send your children to the moon The summer ends and we wonder who we are And there you go, my friends, with your boxes in your car And today I passed the high school, the river, the maple tree I passed the farms that made it Through the last days of the century And I knew that I was going to learn again Again, in this less hazy light I saw the fields beyond the fields The fields beyond the fields And the colors are much brighter now It's like they really want to tell the truth We give our testimony to the end of the summer It's the end of the summer, You can spin the light to gold.