"The Journey-Work of the Stars"

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars. (Walt Whitman)

They mowed the grass today as they do once a week. It's a chore I have been without for the past seven years, and have somehow grown to miss. There is something nice about kicking off your shoes and feeling those long blades working their way between your toes as they paint the soles of your feet muddy green and leave them sticky and sappy with their sweet juice. It's easy for me to feel nostalgic about such a tedious act having not done it for so long, but I miss the smell and the sweat and the sun on my back and face, the feeling of accomplishment when it's over, and the icy sting of cold beer sliding down your throat as your reward.

Tonight Duncan and I walked through the grass after a very long and trying day of work. Dunc rolled among the clipping, joyously and without care, sniffing and huffing while I kicked off my flip-flops and kneaded the small, dry piles into greater ones with my bare feet. The smell was luxurious and intoxicating, and as the moon rose orange and as fat as a too-ripe peach in the east, and stars ignited around and beyond her, I couldn't help but feel the passing of the summer in the coolness of the evening air and the quieting song of the crickets. There is very little grass-mowing left in our immediate future, perhaps only three or four more times if we're lucky. Autumn is coming, with its own parade of fragrances, but I will miss the grass and all the loveliness it brings to my small corner of the world.

I am green at heart, a child of summer and wonder, who loves watching his good red dog roll among its blanket, a smile spread wide across his face.

 

 There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.

(John Calvin)

If you liked this post, or hated it even, I'd love to hear about it. Please take a moment to leave a comment. After all, it's the little things that matter most in this world!

"Mad, Naked, Summer Night!"

All I want tonight is to kick off my flip flops and walk barefoot through the park, down by the lake, holding hands with the one I love. I want to take a bottle of beer for each of us, leave the kittens and Duncan behind and go off on our own, with only the stars and the moon and night blossoms to spy on us and smile as we slip past them. I want to feel as safe and immortal as the teenagers who gather in small groups or in couples and hope we can't smell their pot or don't hear their whispered, amateur dirty talk, followed always by awkward snickers of embarrassment. I want to hold his hand and walk the trail and feel like we did way back when, when confessions were new and exciting and staying up all night talking was not out of the question. I want to run and laugh and not feel as old as I do, with this aching back and these unending practical concerns that the young have no idea are about to swallow them up. Reading is not enough; I want to live the words of Whitman's poem:

Press close, bare-bosomed Night! Press close, magnetic,
nourishing Night!
Night of south winds! Night of the large, few stars!
Still, nodding Night! Mad, naked, Summer Night!

I want. I want. I want. This is what Summer is all about. Wanting and wanting and wanting some more, wanting enough to get through the rest of the year.

Once-Leaf

Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
(Robert Frost, Nothing Gold Can Stay)

The leaves have long since given up looking like leaves. They have been ground down, trod upon and whipped around by the wind and the men who come weekly to rake them up and carry them down to the floor of The Glen, where they linger only briefly before climbing up the hill, across the parking lot where they make their way, like butterflies, back to the trees where they were born. I am convinced they are the same leaves, transformed: sharp, tiny pieces of parchment on which have been written the secret love poems of Autumn. Their shapes are not all they have lost; their voices are gone now as well. There is nothing musical in their dancing nor rhythmic in the way they crunch underfoot. Now they are little more than slivers that sting the eyes and lodge under my pant cuffs in the ridges of my socks. They stick to Duncan, mat in his tail and the long hair of his ears where they don't even whisper anymore. They have ceased to be leaves, and leaves are what make the Autumn bearable. Now it is the sky alone which carries color.

Walk Whitman claimed, "Every leaf a miracle," and they are remarkable things, their veined surfaces bearing the rough shape of the tree, a map of their lineage, a living geneology of sorts. Like poems they are born of something bigger that falls away, becoming its own thing, something unique and without definition yet still carrying the mark of what it once was. Leaves are an essence of the tree as poems are fragments of that which inspired them, a moment, an image, a glance.

These once-leaves pain me. A week ago they were art, now they are little more than accumulation, biting reminders of what came before. They are dead poems, broken and cast aside, clogging my vacuum and unfit even for the tail of a dog.