... and the livin’ is easy

Forsythia blooms are gone. Lilacs are well past peak flowering. Purple vetch blooms are filling local fields. Butterfly weed, and black- and brown-eyed Susans will be blooming by month’s end or thereabouts. Father’s Day is next Sunday. Summer solstice occurs locally less than a week later, at 3:50 pm on June 20. Our community supported agriculture [CSA] summer shares start next Saturday. We’re sliding into deep summer and the weather patterns so far have left personal priorities' conflicts between catching up on yard work and catching up on fishing as the weather improves.

a field with butterfly weed and black-eyed  susans

Photo by J. Harrington

We’ve basically carried “No Mow May” well into June, largely due to persistent intermittent rain making the grass too wet to mow well. If it wasn’t raining, the wind was blowing hard enough to make casting a fly line potentially hazardous. This week we’ll make a dent in the yard clean-up and see if we can squeeze in at least one trip to check out a local trout stream. It looks like water levels are dropping to something close to normal and I refuse to get too bent out of shape about missed opportunities. Controlling the weather is well above my pay grade and my son just gave me an early birthday present that promotes me from codger to curmudgeon. That means I’m officially old enough to legitimately use age as an excuse to sit on my butt and read if I can’t go fishing and don’t wanna mow. It’s not like I’ve got a Home Owners Association breathing down my neck.

Summer

By Carlo Betocchi
Translated by Geoffrey Brock

And it grows, the vain

summer,

even for us with our

bright green sins:

behold the dry guest,

the wind,

as it stirs up quarrels

among magnolia boughs

and plays its serene

tune on

the prows of all the leaves—

and then is gone,

leaving the leaves

still there,

the tree still green, but breaking

the heart of the air.

Notes:

Read the translator's notes on this poem. 

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