By Pattiann Rogers
We heard that first summer coming,
sounding low like heralding drums rumbling
far away, like a desert freshet, like a torrent
of rain all-enveloping, cascading down
a stone-dry arroyo unstoppable.
And some of us saw it coming in declensions
through the distance, the spinning bowls
and rolling barrels of its hot brasses glinting
among the cloud shadows on the plains
and on into the darker buddings of the forest.
And we felt the sound of sun sprouting,
pushing and parting bindings of sizzling
chee and wheat grasses, an airy swarm
of midges, scattered lacewings, checkered
whites, bee breath everywhere, the hard
beginnings of pomes and pips. We heard
the vines, already smothering, bosky
pea bush, rabbit bush, snakeweed flowering
one after the other, all repeating their chords
of climbing blossoms, blinding the ears.
Prairie swallows, kingbirds, blackbirds, larks,
swirled and darted over the flows of the land,
sounding their triangle notes, into the delves,
attacking and courting, frantic with purpose.
We believed in light and its roiling forms.
The fragrance of this new born summer
was the purest force, rank, sweet, meaty,
and rotten, heady powder, lilac talc, one brief
dusting of paprika-pepper plucking like a guitar
barely there, a remembrance of cinnamon.
That first summer came suffocating
with temptations of pain, not ardor, though
we called the ardor pain, the way it could take
anyone unwillingly and the body had to move,
to run to catch up, the allure, once a cry, once
the terror of laughter (a night singer throughout
singing an encore in solo), to follow, finally
grasping, swinging over, lifted, carried away,
every faith in the body holding on.
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Originally published in Terrain: A Journal of the Built + Natural Environments.
My daytime excitement on Thursday most concerned a katydid on the back window which had my cats extremely interested and a trip to AC Moore armed with a 55% off coupon for shiny marbles. (I stopped in a Hallmark store too, but it was an unsuccessful trip.) Everyone was waiting for evening, when the Orioles played the Tigers in their first game of the postseason -- and the O's won by a lovely large margin! We are really hoping for a Baltimore-Washington Parkway series.
We also watched the season premiere of Gracepoint, about which I feel completely ambivalent because I don't see how they can improve on Broadchurch and the remake really seems to exist entirely because Americans can't understand any non-American English besides old school BBC accents and because Olivia Colman is not considered sexy enough for US prime time. But I love Tennant, and thus far it's very close to the original. Barely Balanced at the Maryland Renaissance Festival:
Jimmy, Margret and Cameron making a human fountain.
Margret hula hooping standing on Cameron held up by Jimmy who's juggling knives.
Jimmy creating a slackline for Cameron to walk across.
Cameron balanced on two sets of boards on two sets of buckets getting sprayed by a water gun.
Margret balanced on Jimmy, no hands!
Margret juggling on Jimmy and Cameron's backs as Jimmy holds them all up.
Cameron, standing on Margret's legs, about to drop water balloons on Jimmy while the latter tries to pop them blowing air darts.
Cameron on stilts.
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