Golden days of Summer

This morning, returning from a reading session with the Granddaughter Person,  I was slowly cruising a gravel road when a whitetail doe and I noticed each other. She was about 20 yards ahead of the Jeep, on the righthand half of the road. She looked at me as if to say: “Do I know you? What are you doing here at this hour of the morning? Nevermind!” She then flowed up the grassy hill on the right. I had stopped for the doe’s inspection and now slowly rolled again toward home. I was going slow enough that I never even had to touch the brakes as another doe bounded across the road, followed promptly by a fawn yelling “Wait for me, mom!”  Encounters like these are among the reasons I spend much of my local travel time off beaten paths.

few-leaf sunflower (Helianthus occidentalis)

Photo by J. Harrington

It’s the time of year when black-eyed Susans, crowned beggarticks, and a multitude of species of sunflowers, among other yellow blooms, adorn the roadsides. It’s relatively easy to let the yellow of wildflowers combine with the yellow of a sunny August morning to improve any gloomy residual outlook leftover from reading the morning news.

bumblebee on sunflower

Photo by J. Harrington

Today, for the first time this season, I noticed some leaves beginning to turn color. The bright red leaves on the sumac weren’t much of a surprise. The golden yellow leaves on some other undergrowth might be attributable to heat stress / drought, or not. After all, the Autumn Equinox is but seven weeks away and meteorological autumn begins September 1, only four weeks from now.

August Morning

By Albert Garcia

It’s ripe, the melon

by our sink. Yellow,

bee-bitten, soft, it perfumes

the house too sweetly.

At five I wake, the air

mournful in its quiet.

My wife’s eyes swim calmly

under their lids, her mouth and jaw

relaxed, different.

What is happening in the silence

of this house? Curtains

hang heavily from their rods.

Ficus leaves tremble

at my footsteps. Yet

the colors outside are perfect--

orange geranium, blue lobelia.

I wander from room to room

like a man in a museum:

wife, children, books, flowers,

melon. Such still air. Soon

the mid-morning breeze will float in

like tepid water, then hot.

How do I start this day,

I who am unsure

of how my life has happened

or how to proceed

amid this warm and steady sweetness?

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