Kinds of Honey

Today started off so quietly, so calmly overcast. Then the sun and the clouds took turns, the lightning made an appearance, and evening came in thick clouds and contrasts, gray-blue and glowing white.

A shelter from the sun. A coolness. This is reflective time, work-without-speaking time, idle-on-the-porch time. This is lie-on-your-stomach-with-the-door-open-and-read-poetry weather. It is walk-across-the-asphalt-barefoot weather. Rain might fall, or it might not. But either way, for a little while the ground is not baked, and the dwellers of the earth are not scorched and reaching for sunscreen.

It feels like a reprieve. And so it is. I want to page through favorite books in all this slowness. In a moment I’m going to take the beets off the stove and let them chill for tomorrow’s lunch, and then I’m going to put on socks and sweats and a tank top, and spread out with a pile of how-to-grow-things manuals, right where the breeze can reach me.

Good summer evening, all.