Tail Ends

And so the dog days settle to an end.

Wikipedia tells us:

The term "Dog Days" was used by the Greeks, as well as the ancient Romans, who called these days caniculares dies—days of the dogs—after Sirius the "Dog Star" (in Latin Canicula), the brightest star in the heavens besides the Sun. The dog days of summer are also called canicular days.
The Dog Days originally were the days when Sirius, the Dog Star, rose just before or at the same time as sunrise (heliacal rising), which is no longer true, owing to precession of the equinoxes. The Romans sacrificed a brown dog at the beginning of the Dog Days to appease the rage of Sirius, believing that the star was the cause of the hot, sultry weather.

For other endings, tale ends, on this 31st day—
Consider a list or two of the greatest endings in literature;
Match endings to books yourself;
See how many of these last lines of films you remember.

And for a fitting epitaph to this dog-ridden month, wagging away into the cool, prim, light-dappled clearing of September, or slipping off with toothmarked bone in mouth and tail between its legs to lie under a shady cabin step at least 'til after Labor Day, let us have the famous last line of Scott Fitzgerald's elegiac The Great Gatsby, also his own epitaph (the last last lines of all)—

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.


image: Pierre Bonnard, Dog with Cherry Tart
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