Looking out

and away.

The only snow

we're likely to see this year.

Sometimes, I remember

the complexity of being twenty.

A fruit for winter

Lamplight on yellow

leaves in the twilight as we hurried home through the rain, still wondering.

November hallelujah:

(When the light reached their branches it felt like the trees began to sing.)

No wonder

Matisse used red so freely.

Something exotic

about the moon tonight, and the first intimations

of snow.

Everyone was drinking coffee

in the living room, but I was caught by the empty table and memories of our laughter.

Brilliant light:

 Come back.

Coming into the week

with an open heart.

Lovely and unexpected

as a windless day in November.

Last colors,

scattered like confetti after a party, brightening the end of the day.

The view through my windshield

(If you live in the Northwest you learn to love a smeared world.) 

I lit the candles in the rain

and she came outside to see what I had gathered and to say a prayer for our lost loves.

Sometimes I circle around

that moment when everything pauses.

Catching my breath

in the wind and the rain with long grass covering the world like fur.

One of those days,

but what glorious light and color.

The crickets keep singing

all through this rainy night and these steadfast roses break my heart.

A brief glimpse

that flares up like the flame in a lantern--suddenly brightening the rest of the day.

The original meaning

of the word "spangled".

Sometimes it seems

as if the world throws you a bouquet: a jolting reminder that beauty is not some kind of idea but a recurring gift that shapes the days.

Still summer for most of the day

Watching her try to balance on the soccer ball reminded me of my own attempts this week to stay upright as things kept changing, and I'm drawn to her fierce concentration and the one drop of sweat hanging in the middle of her forehead like a crystal bindi.

Lush :

this tangle of flowers and weeds is home to the crickets that fill our nights with a wild thrumming.

If we could start summer all over again,

we'd stay until we were willing to go. 

(Maybe never.)

Reading in the dark

in the middle of the forest.

Launching into the world

at almost-seventeen.

Heading home

along with the moon. Cold for the end of August, but entrancing.

Two days ago,

and I can still feel this light in my body.

Every year

it's like this for at least a couple of hours.

The river remembered

is always backlit and swift.

We kept looking for river otters

 and, one morning, we saw them swim to the little island right across from our campsite.

Whenever I think about summer,

I seem to think about water: waves in North Carolina, the bright blue green of the river, 

a morning spent in a canoe on the Columbia slough, the uneven shimmer of moon on the sea. 

The slur and rush of water, the humidity in the air back east, the first smell of the sea 

when I open the car door and push out into the wind, the perfection of finding 

a break in the riverbank--a place to finally step into the water.

Missing the Atlantic

and the summer is speeding by me.  Yet, last night I sat outside with a friend and the wind was warm and the stars came out and the hours slowed down and opened outward. 

Summer, incidentally:

Sometimes the summer seems like a series of glimpses, incidental but glowing.  I keep on gathering them, put them in the box under the bed---saving them for a day when I need to see the long spangled summer days again.

Already nostalgic

for dusk at the beach, even though this was only a couple of weeks ago.

Cherries:

The world is not just beautiful--she is also open-handed and quick to give everything away.

Last night on the farm

and an hour of magic with the girls out in the pasture, both human and equine.

My sister's farm

(treasures everywhere).

Evening

at the beach, right after dusk, with the moon high in the sky.

Quiet

except for the whirr and clamor of bugs and birds in the tall grasses.

Swirl of foam,

unpredictable waves, cousins holding hands in the middle of a summer sea.

  

Carolina, tidal creek