August Journal: Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Evening gathers up its colander of
crisp mantis-green okra pods. Its swift
wrist snaps each off. Nestled with them, lie
shiny cucumbers and a matched pair
of tomatoes. Setting its harvest on
the hammock net, sunset opens the
grand cotillion of puffed and flaring clouds.
Fuchsia foxtrots with a full bosomed
yellow matron. Burgundy sweeps gold
across a slender wisp’s exited arms and
spins the sweet young thing high above his
lithe elegance. Horizon burns in
brassy blasts of orange. The colander
forgets to pick up and go inside.
August Journal: Thursday, August 15, 2013
The slant of early sun burns fast through
shadows, and streaks the lawn. The mower
spews out swathes of tangy grass mulch forth
and back. Like coffee steam, dew lifts puffs
from the shaggy slope waiting for its
predestined shearing. Cap and sun-block
pretend to help. As the snarl nears the
stream, frogs, arrow-quick and lean, leap from
their undercover blinds and splat the
water’s bared chest. Roused from its morning
bask, a Box Turtle’s overturned bowl
glints the shuttling light. The sun
goes right on fanning its blinding flame
higher. The mower jerks left and veers.
August Journal: Friday, August 16, 2013
As sun taunts the horizon edge, clouds
bloom wide moorlands of rippling heather.
Hold your breath. They don’t last. In shifting
kaleidoscopic acrobatics,
light and clouds are sly and shiftless. Streaks
shift up into billows. Vermilions
shift to creams and yellows. Striated
sheets of gray open into tucks and
folds. Nothing stays. Standing in firm bare
feet and dewy grass, each easy breath
inhales its own cloudscape, and as it
escapes into a gasp, each scape is
already something else. Sun’s raw now
already rolls up a crimson head.
August Journal: Friday, August 16, 2013
Where it lies in its secret lair set
behind the trees and well behind the
row of houses, pomegranate blood
streaks the small lake in the woods. It is
split in two by the evening light. One
half is a mirror of motionless
upside down dark green trees with char black
trunks and branches. Shafts of sunset stab
through gaps between leaves to lacerate
the other half with dapples and raw
sanguine slices. Between the two, in
the silent borderland, six ducks drift
on their fluttering underwater
feet. Six heads bob in synchrony.
August Journal: Saturday, August 24, 2013
Out of old myths of quest and wrath, tall
thunderheads march down from mountains
in the west and out across flood-plain
cities. Faster than newsman radar
warnings, they lash treetops until their
skirts whip up a frenzy of trollish
dancing. Droplets smack windows. Windows
slam shut. Angry threats knock about the
sky. Frantic wind-chimes clank. Door locks snap.
Crackling excitement in the lower
clouds, flashes fizzle like a scoreless
game of soccer and, as the ogres’
bullying exposes its bluster,
excitement packs up the rain and shrinks off.