A breeze in the yard, a very encouraging one. I feel it after my swim, when I take Charlie out for his walk. I have been to the pond, early, and the water was glassy and the beach was populated with swimmers like me. I swam from the beach, around the island, back to the beach, happy I chose the fresh water over the pool. Because I can have the pool all year long. It’s almost mid-July. I want to slow it down by doing everything I can outdoors. Charlie and I get a call from my daughter after we’ve started out into the woods. Wave wants to join us after all. We circle back, he rides his tractor, we go down the trail and stop at the brook to throw rocks. He is learning to throw well and throws, still, with both his left hand and his right. We keep going, but go no further than where the path crosses the railroad tracks. Big machines belonging to the train company are clearing trees and brush. A grabber hoists the fallen trees into the chipper that shoots the mangled tree out in huge gusts of growling breath. It’s their land, their right of way, they can do it. But it’s shocking, the absence of the trees and brush and I think about the birds and the milkweed that grows wild there, crushed. I return home and enjoy my outdoor shower and the walk back across the fresh green grass. I revise my poem all morning. I vacillate between solving and not solving it, and leave it in a better place after all. My daughter and I go to Home Depot in the heat, with the breeze, and I buy some herbs and flowers, perennials, because I want more butterflies, and bee balm for the hummingbirds. In the garden, my daughter, Wave and I water and plant and pick a few peas, many squash, the first two cucumbers and a few ripe tomatoes for the salad. Yes, the lettuce from the garden too. I spend a great deal of time making the flatbread pizzas with onions and basil and butternut squash. Everyone eats when they feel like it. And I know they appreciate it.