'Tis a berry good time

If you're reading this, it should mean you've survived July 2019. It also means we've reached the start of my favorite "half" of the year. mid-Summer through harvest, hunting, and holiday seasons. We've usually seen the hottest of Summer's temperatures by now and slowly, very slowly, days shorten, temperature and humidity drops, more and more leaves show colors, migrators begin to head south and soups, stews and chili come back into season.

Meanwhile, with more and more berries becoming available, our Better Half becomes inspired to bake pies and tarts and crumbles. To compensate, we do more and more outdoor chores, so the berry many extra calories don't all end up around our waist or in our baggage compartment.

serviceberries ripen in August

Photo by J. Harrington

Some time recently, we're not sure when or where, we read a line that went something like "Don't let the minute spoil the hour." Internet searches haven't revealed a source or an author, but the line has inspired us to draft a poem that goes:

timely advice

by J. Harrington

if the minute
spoils the hour

and the hour
spoils the day

then the day
spoils the week

and the week
spoils the month

'til the month
spoils the year

our years are too numbered
our minutes are too few

grudges and grumbles are heavy to carry
lighten up then please, won't you?

If you don't want to follow our advice, then please emulate this version of the two poems with the same title by:

Mary Oliver: "August"

When the blackberries hang
swollen in the woods, in the brambles
nobody owns, I spend

all day among the high
branches, reaching
my ripped arms, thinking

of nothing, cramming
the black honey of summer
into my mouth; all day my body

accepts what it is. In the dark
creeks that run by there is
this thick paw of my life darting among

the black bells, the leaves; there is
this happy tongue.

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