. . . Remember yourself as a child—
running barefoot long ago—
attuned to the grammar of grass
and all the ways you wrote yourself
in water, earth, and air.
~ Lisa Vihos, Learning the Language

This was a morning for walking and being with the flowers and plants, to bring scent and color, texture and touch into my consciousness. I pinched the milkweed pod between my fingers to feel the plump seed-feathers tucked tightly on the the other side of the green skin. Still moist, these pods, not dry and cracked open and flung empty as they will be soon. I was alone, with Charlie, but when I stepped into the lace meadow, I could hear their voices and exclamations: this meadow in its spectacle and drama. Yes, the wildflower, Queen Anne’s Lace is an invasive. And why shouldn’t it be? I stopped on the trestle, above the river reflecting, clouds, trees, insects: two white-tailed deer leapt away in the wetlands. August drought dries the brook to black. And then the cardinal flower stands blood red above the blue forget-me-nots. Charlie seems delighted that I am taking my time, examining all the accidental particulars of this new day. Yes, there is poetry, a workshop, to return home for, but I don’t have a poem to workshop. This is a week of settling, distilling, not generativity, apparently, and so be it. My youngest comes home and says what has been on my mind: Suzi has attention, these days, only for one of us: The expectant one. The one who cooks and cooks broths of encouragement to eat, eat! Suzi’s world becomes more internalized. She is with us, and not entirely, she is very much with herself. Content with the necessities of age, her arthritic ache of slowing down, her hearing loss, her gladness to smell the rabbit who had made a den under the deck, and she has no need to scent him out and chase him. Dirt, cool and black, under the bushes, this is where she enjoys being, on a hot summer day. A summer which is so likely to be her last with us. The faintest veil of pink hangs in front of the baby blue sky, the sun has sunk and the light is going from this day. I pinched the milkweed pod and my fingers refuse to forget what it means to be: August.