Chalk and doves

I created worlds out of white chalk and the dark shadows of summer’s time. 

Steering bike handles over pavement, sun on my shoulders, hair wet with chlorine and sweat.

Circling round the trees and mourning doves high in the branches, suitcases full of crumbling letters in shrubs, rusty tin boxes holding the treasures of an eight year old. 

Jaguar skateboard, flips and falls, the bump of the driveway terror to my wrists. 

Slender leaves of eucalyptus tearing delicately under wheel, under flip flops then casually tossed aside before jumping back into the pool. 

The days long and languid, Goonies in the afternoon, air conditioned and stale indoors, 4pm light strips through dusty blinds, dusky minds. 

Wrapped in towels and nostalgia, pouring forward into the time of scents and scenes. 

What is different now? 

How has time accelerated into this flow of words and not actions? 

I want the pool and chalk lines constructing a world of solid and fluid, swim and stand, tag not it. 

The light changes, my skin reddens, my eyes close again and again, season after season. 

This is the how and the why, the circle and the shadow. 

The now and the past kicking past, Marco Polo, tag, we’re all it. 

Summer

is
time. 

Gratitude

Summer. I am watching sun filter through old planks of a barn, prayer flags faded and torn, old couches softly decaying in still light. My desk is an old board nailed to sawed off two by fours, light green paint chipping and floating to join the pine needles and crunchy leaves on the dusty floor. Mosquitoes fill the evening-lit air with motion; a thousand specks of life and movement, no reason, no destination.

I am full of gratitude for this past week (and for this year, this life, but I will be specific in an effort to name my joy). This is how:

I am grateful for home-made, home-picked blackberry pie bubbling over and through buttery crust pressed into a cast iron skillet and the smell that fills the house as it bakes.

For the voices of a dozen men and women gathering on the front porch last night to do nothing but sing melodies and harmonies, sing for singing’s sake, sing for the pleasure of listening.

For a discussion at a potluck on that same porch nights before that ended with a promise to think about shooting deer in her backyard to dress, store, and eat for the winter. And how many island gatherings have had conversations centering around self-sufficiency and efficiently and sustainably maintaining an omnivorous diet in non-conventional (but really traditional) ways.

For a swing in the trees that makes my stomach drop every time as my body flies out of the forest and over the road far below.

For telling fantastical stories after the candles are blown out, the darkness ringing with bright laughter. And singing softly to sleepy ears upon waking.

For a house full of lovely people who grow vegetables and make food and call for community in so many different ways.

For the opportunity to open myself ever more deeply to love and connection in all of its various forms.

For bone broth soup made with beef from cows raised less than a mile away and veggies from the garden I help to grow.

For dolphins (porpoises?) surfacing in the sound as my kayak paddles touch glassy cold water. 

For dancing and running and leaping on the beach reminding me that all we are meant to do in this life is have fun and that fun comes in many different forms as does love and pain and growth.

For a tree rotting from within shepherded reverently from sky to ground.

For sleeping outside underneath the stars, underneath a bright moon, circled by a quiet army of trees, circled by quiet arms.

For sipping dream tea in the evenings, laps covered in quilts, bullfrogs shouting stories across the pond, owls questioning everything.

Summer

My hands forage for edible leaves in the thick forest of kale. I salvage what I can, leaving the rest for aphids and rabbits and worms (the worms always get something in the end, don’t they, whether it is the tender flesh of bunny or ribs of a browning leaf?). I encircle the stalk with my calloused palms and pull. The sound of separation, of cleaving, the arms of the plant reaching deeper and finally giving as I pull and pull and pull those exploratory veins from the earth. Roots ripped from soil lay in a tangle of delicate threads, moist bits of sand and clay and billions of bacteria falling onto flowers, onto plucked stems, onto the same ground below. Ashes to ashes, dirt to dirt. 

It is time to play Shiva.

As the sun seemingly stalls overhead, summer begins with destruction and life. It is time for the new. I clear beds of green and yellow and brown. I feed the compost with what we didn’t consume. I heap the beds with manure and work it into the hungry ground. Smoothing the bed, I untuck seeds from colorful packets promising bounty and from my fingers nestle each one into its new home. 

This is the business of life. 

This is the virtue of death. 

The work never ends, thankfully. My mind on nurturing the radicle, the shoots and leaves, the fruits of the vegetables' sun-fueled labor, the harvest, the flower and the disintegration. I am here to witness it all as equinox becomes solstice and we begin to fall again towards that equal time of light and dark. I walk through a sea of pale daisies that were once shorn fields of bright yellow dandelions and I wonder what will come next. There is wonder and surprise as I ease raspberries from prickly branches that were once covered with blooms. I marvel as the carrots push at their dirty blankets of protection and show proud shoulders beneath a wispy sky of deep green. I consider the immensity of the universe, what we think we know, what we think we truly are, as each seed becomes something entirely different from what it once was and has always been. 

I tear away the old rotting parts, I plant the new. I farm, I write, I cook, I sit on the porch and let the sun coax out the freckles on my nose. 

This is summer. This is a seed for what is to come. This is the nourishment of now.

Eat the Truth

It makes me anxious. Terrified really. I don’t want this to happen. I want to shield them from this reality. I want to pluck out the evidence at its source. They may be the last to know even when WE ALL KNOW. We are OK with it. Sort of. We just skirt around the issue as we chew and smile.

But They may not be OK with it. They may not want to skirt anything of the sort.

They will be excited for the day the box arrives. They will come to town with high expectations, a rumbling belly, a head full of dreams of creation and nourishment.

Fwap. Fwap. Plastic arms open into theirs. They gently expose the contents of the mysterious black box they've been waiting for all week. They pull at curly leafed lettuce and poke at the smoothly wrapped gift of cabbage. They lift up the kale to find adorable peppers and a rainbow of chard. They pop a leaf of basil into their mouth unable to resist the memories of warm summer pesto evenings. They pick out their striped tomatoes and peach-colored watermelons. They pile everything into a bag or box and say hello to all of us harvesters sitting at a table eating lunch as they make their way back to their car.

My anxiety grows. I want to warn them. But I also know that this is an important life lesson. That they need to know the facts and I can’t be the one to halt that process. I can’t be the one to pretend like it didn’t happen.

They will get home and plan out dinner. Corn will be on the menu. They will wash the lettuce for salad, chop up the eggplant to fry in olive oil, slice the tomatoes for garnish. Then comes the moment when they peel back the husks and silk and find it gorging on their dinner. Their dinner! Excrement and sloppy chewing filling the space around emptied kernels with a wriggling monstrous worm sloshing away in his own doings.

They will drop the corn and scream. They will throw the corn out the window straight into the compost pile. They will root through the rest of their box looking for wrigglers. They will never buy organic corn (or anything else from the ground) again. EVER. The farm will go out of business.

Pause. Rewind.

These are sensible, CSA, farm loving folks. They know that worms are a sign that the corn is not sprayed with pesticides, not GMO, not dripping with toxins. They know that sharing with the bugs happens, that this sweet corn is delicious to a variety of creatures.

And perhaps they want to know the truth:

Corn comes from outside!

Corn grows up from the dirt!

Corn and all the other organic vegetables inevitably have creatures crawling on them at one point or another whether you see them or not. And sometimes that one point is when they go into the boxes and go home with you.

So why the anxiety? Because I have seen those who won’t touch dirty tomatoes and shrink away from twisted carrots. I have washed my fair share of produce going into CSA boxes to ease folks into the ‘veggies come from dirt’ discovery. But I know the time is now for the link to be solidified between soil and nourishment, that there are so many who are ready for the mental hurdle that bugs on food can present. And we are helping them on that journey.

I start to have faith that these folks will still eat that corn. That they will embrace the worm (or feed him to the chickens) and devour the sweet juicy niblets. That they will appreciate the reminder that all life needs nourishment and who (or what) can resist fresh September corn on the cob? 

I look down onto my plate full of salad from the farm. 

There is a tiny green worm inching towards the edge. 

I smile and let him crawl, the worry dripping away like butter off a cob. I am no longer anxious about the effect the worm in the corn will have. I realize I am actually part of the effect, a source of positive change in this society, thanks to this farmer’s honesty. 

I welcome another creature to our table and keep on eating.

June bugs

Iridescent and flappy I scream into your head, get tangled in your hair, creep with sandpapery legs round and round your skull. I am blind to the greens and blues, I don’t see the reds in the same way you do.

I (simply deeply) feel the fruit nearby and I go to it, my wings clickety clackety clicking closer and closer. I have no other motive, no other care. I’ve been dreaming about this moment since conception in your compost pile.
I was that grub you threw back.

Now I want your pulp.

I want the juice to run down my six legs, the orange flesh of a nectarine to stick to my mandibles. I want bits of fig to cling to my back, purple plum on my belly.
That is my pleasure.

But you are in my way. You smell sweet with fallen salvia petals in your hair, dandelion tufts clinging to your eyebrows. I am amused running through your strands as you claw and whimper at my presence. You are my delay, my delight, my happy pause before the reward.

Your fingers catch and swipe me away, I am free again.

Your peaches are exquisite.

June

Translucent sunsets, fog drifting in over the lawn from the ocean. Weathered shingles and small dogged ladies. Pulled taffy and piled high chocolate peanut butter cookie dough ice cream dripping down the cup down the arm down the sun bleached sidewalk. Beaches still chilled from Spring. Slipping through the harbor under cloud white sails soaring fluttering tightly pulling us forward out into the Sound sounding out our way. Lobster rolls and little girls wearing party pink and convert ables streaming past the gulls and beach blankets. My arms strong and brown and freckled. Collars turned up, flops replaced by tasseled slip-ons, patchwork pastel and Nantucket reds. Cold swirling water and broad leafed trees singing in the wind and blue crazy oh so blue skies. It's away, it's home, it's summer, it's the Vineyard.