To loosen with all ten fingers held wide and limber

And lift up a patch, dark-green, the kind for lining cemetery baskets,

Thick and cushiony, like an old-fashioned doormat, 

The crumbling small hollow sticks on the underside mixed with roots, 

And wintergreen berries and leaves still stuck to the top, —

That was moss-gathering. 

But something always went out of me when I dug loose those carpets .. .

~ Excerpt from “Moss-Gathering,” by Theodore Roethke

Breaking from sleep, painful. A disturbing dream: Leaving the Party, I call it. My body aches, I’m groggy and tired. But determined to go, to be on the dock by 7:00, and I do it. But I walk, I don’t run, my legs are tired and it’s humid. I have left the all night party, it seems, and feel like I’ve spent the night awake. My meditation by the pond is sweet, focused, satisfying. Another still morning, and I’m glad I’ve come to hear the swimmer’s stroking by me, and the racket of birdsong. And I cut my swim a little short, but I go. I walk home with Charlie, under a magnificent sky of clouds and sun pushing through. It wants so much to be July July July. There is tree fungus, like a listening ear, and a tiger lily like a fiercely pupiled eye of fire. I work on a poem from the letters. One. I get one done. And then the youngest is back from a trip to the Cape with her boyfriend, and they are in the heated yard with a lovely breeze, and then my son and his girlfriend and Luke, and my husband and my daughter, and Charlie being tackled by Luke, and Suzi staying far away to be Zen, and this breeze buffs our skin under the sunshine, and I am wide awake and grateful for this unplanned, happy time.