(Dedicated to Max Wheat who offered critique)
Cruise around the tomato beds
To look for red roundness among green foliage
Stoop and fondle a candidate
Squeeze to feel a little give
Give it a gentle twist
It should break off easily
Look for more by spreading vines gently
Gently place the tomato in the best basket you own
For thousands of years
We were innocent – human activity was small
Now it’s our fault
We are choking the planet
Most of us are good people
BUT…just by our existence,
We are not good for the planet
There’s too many of us
I don’t like sudden
It’s too sudden
Like a champagne bottle cork about to pop
I know it will happen, but I jump anyway
I want things slow
No surprises
Show me a world
Where there are ample warnings
Where slow changes are slow
The New York State Delorme Atlas shows Millerton way up in the northeast corner of Dutchess County. Nancy heard about it from Jayne Anne at Homecomng Farm. “It’s a little historic village with not many tourists.” We have a few other destinations in mind…the New York State Fair in Syracuse and Rhode Island. A ferry ride across the sound and a two hour ride sounded better.
Within the path of totality
So brief, but spectacular
Not so much in our side yard
A pinhole viewer
I call it my “eclipse-o-meter”
I held the device
Pointed to the sun/moon eclipse
A tiny image, the size of a period
A smiley-face Sun
The moon bite
No telescope, no trip
No glasses
To totality lane
Facebook is not for me
I let myself get sucked in
Commenting with stupid stuff
And this takes away
From my longing to be engaged
With the natural world
To have my hands in soil
Planting things
Watching things grow
Hearing the wind and rain
How can Facebook complete
with a real tree?
Time to put on pants
And start the morning
Get things done
Anything is possible
This was the last day for the interns. Don will have a skeleton crew from here on out. I will miss their youth and energy.
Weeds dominate.
I found Don picking cucumbers. He left the fat yellow-orange overripe ones for seed.
I love the ten athletic field events. Track events are exciting, but their sport is competition with others. Field athletes compete to improve their best result and to try to break a world record, and win the gold.Track runners run. Field athletes have to master several skills.
I thrill over the high jump and pole vault. Although it only takes a few seconds to complete the event, I obsess over seeing an athlete fly through the air, arch their back, then flip their legs and pass over the bar. It’s like gravity weakens slightly for their ascent. They chose their event based on strength and skill. They practice, train, and enter events all to reach the pinnacle at the World Championships. It is inspirational to watch the results of sacrifice and determination.
It is a quiet, early Sunday morning, in my reading chair, with back to the Sun. with a cup of coffee, I have a fresh moment of solitude. As the sun rises, shadows form on the opposite wall created by the slats from a Venetian blind. Sunlight is chopped into parallel bands of light and dark. I gaze at the shadows and notice that they are shifting slowly in the opposite direction to the suns position. As it moves up and to the right, the shadows move down and to the left.
Willow Street is busy 6 days a week. This morning, no rumbling…I am immersed in rare quiet what will soon be broken. Special moments like this we are privileged to encounter each day are precious and longed for. Even if it lasts for a half hour, it grounds me. I can hear the cardinal, wren, dove clearly with no background sounds.
I imagine the solar disk rising above Southards Boatyard across the street. It pops up above the sail loft, above the white plastic covers of boats in storage. This is something to be thankful for. I try to actually see the shadows move but can’t. At times, I think I see them move but they don’t. If I look away for a few minutes, another glance at the same spot and the shadows has moved slightly. I am tangled in the arc of a rising Sun. How can I find another moment during the day when I am enveloped in the shadows that play with the Sun?
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