“One more sunny day predicted before the upward swing of a hurricane along the coast move in. The remnants of heat, are everywhere, though the day is slightly cooler. Flower stems, heavy with bloom, berry stems broken from the weight of recent, prolific fruiting, crab grass explosions, all await my carefully calculated curation. No wonder, then, when I go for my usual, coveted 2nd cup of coffee at the general store, the carafe is empty. Ditto, the one next to it, and the one that’s left is my least favorite, a generic brand. I fill my paper cup and move to the creamer pitcher, simultaneously driven by some maternal instinct, to use napkins from the holder to mop up the mess. It must be the top of summer now, tipping, tilting, not yet landing, & feel the pull of the shifting season, slowing my movements, to quietly mark this moment of change. Autumn comes in stealth, covertly signaling to those who need to know. The woman at the cash register is also doing inventory, trying to juggle several jobs at once. There is always a dearth of staff, at critical junctures, that must be seamlessly negotiated. The month of August is oddly grand, while fraught with the many losses to come. Declining income for some, a scrambling to adjust to the inevitable withdrawal of warm temps, and problems that will need attending to, as tourists begin to vacate the state. Not there yet, it’s still peaking; a precariously wealth of habitation and demand for services is spuriously flowing, like water, like rain, like desire. And as with all desires that seek fulfillment, we are hoping they will continue to hold us in a flurry of delicious wanting, until the last. The plants mirror this beauty of anticipation & longing. Flowers spent here, are quickly supplanted by flowers there, and so on, and so on, until nature beats the very special drum of retreat, a simpler song, an introspective melody, one that seduces us pied piper-like, to go below. I suppose without this, we would perish atop, much as the Titanic sank, in partying form, or so it has been portrayed as some kind of allegory, about life, and how reluctant we are to give up on the joy we once imagined possible. But I do believe in temporal joys, as much as one can. Their arrivals and departures, cannot be planned. And I ponder, crouched by a pristine pond, that being a stranger in one’s own life is not so hard to accomplish. This is a world in which our dreams go rogue. They come and go of their own accord, like a hummingbird’s wings in the ear, there & gone. Who knew a life could be so vast? To encompass flitting happiness, abject sorrow, and miles of mundane, sweet ordinariness. A fitting dilemma of rocks beneath my sore knees, and seed pods, tangled inconsolably, into the unruly weave my hair.”
