#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

Birdbath and Hydrangea

The flame-red moon, the harvest moon,
Rolls along the hills, gently bouncing,
A vast balloon,
Till it takes off, and sinks upward
To lie on the bottom of the sky, like a gold doubloon.
The harvest moon has come,
Booming softly through heaven, like a bassoon.
And the earth replies all night, like a deep drum. . .

~Excerpt from “Harvest Moon,” by Ted Hughes

The summer days of waking and walking out into the yard without a sweater or something on my feet have passed. But the cool fresh air draws me to running. I take a three-mile run through the woods, and my phone is malfunctioning, and so I get no pictures. Charlie trails me. But he hangs in. I’m not going fast. I run through Rocky Narrows and get caught in a little bit of mud in my new running shoes. They are baptized now with messy woods. This area of the trail is swampy and under a thick canopy and there are multiple brooks, tiny ones that run through it. I run past the cattails in the marsh under the open sky and broken trees. I run over the tree roots that want to trip me up, I run so very very slowly up the hills, and notice all the berries on the dogwood, bright red and the leaves that have fallen in full color onto the trail. Then, when I am done, I am at my desk in the nicely quiet house. There is writing to read in my monologue course. Tonight I went looking for a new audible book. I have downloaded a memoir about the author Louise Fitzhugh who wrote one of my favorite books as a girl, Harriet the Spy. In the late afternoon I walked around the yard and our trails with the special one and we smelled the herbs. The hydrangea by the birdbath in one of the front gardens is wine colored and, in front, the blue one is just bursting into bloom. Tonight, bright in the sky, the Harvest Moon, waning. And Frank is home.