May 29, 2018

summer and its attendant paradoxes

The tomato vines are thriving in the potent heat of the shadeless backyard,
and three weeks away from the school year's final bell, every kid in this town
barrels down the street with the frayed straps of a backpack fluttering behind them, 
barely keeping their bodies earthbound. Evenings, the parking lot
at the local ice cream shop is a buzzy coil of customers, the arms of its teenaged staff
already muscled from the breakneck pace of scooping. Meanwhile, something inside of me
feels downshifted, quieter, humbled perhaps by the teeming explosions of change
that herald this season. Maybe I'm not ready to join the frenzied, jubilant fray. Or else,
my calendar unfolds in uncalendared pages, the soil of my garden warming to its own sun,
bearing not fruit exactly, but the patient, undisturbed seed that precedes it.