The Bounties and Blessings of Summer

"That beautiful season the Summer! Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light;
and the landscape lay as if new, created in all the freshness of childhood."
(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

I cannot tell you how perfect this night was, with Duncan, Kona and Melissa at the park, playing fetch under what was one of the most beautiful sunset skies I've ever seen, the kind of sunset only a child could draw, with rays of golden light breaking the spilled edges of indigo night into stripes, a luminous red seeping though and outlining the fabric of the air, igniting the quiet shadows between the deep of the trees. Even the dogs, tired as they were from chasing the ball, stopped and rested in the long grass and basked in the departing joy of the day and the ebullient chorus of coming night. The breast moon, fleshy and imperfect on the far side of the sky, watched over us, a flitting cloud of bats, circling overhead, angling and diving across the golden glow of her swollen, pendulous arc. There was not a moment that Melissa and I did not catch our breaths and sigh in a deep, satisfactory awe, pointing, our arms pink before us, golden auras glowing around the tips of our fingers.

It is good to be alive, good to have a dog or two at your side, and good to thank the universe for being able to stop long enough to recognize and name all the bounties of life. I am blessed indeed.