06.06.19

June’s early heat wave broke last night with thunder and lightning and soaking rains just after midnight.  There is nothing quite so lovely as awakening in the morning to the sound of much-needed rain falling outside the window.  It felt like full-on summer this week.  The screen doors are now on the French doors to the porch, groupings of wicker chairs are strewn across the lawn, boats at water’s edge.  And, I’ve been able to hang sheets on the clothesline.  My mother would be appalled at how my sheets are unevenly pinned to the line, and, sure enough, the creases didn’t line up when I folded them after they were dry.  Nevertheless, next to summer rain, is there anything better than the smell of fresh air and sunshine when you lay yourself down to sleep at night.

In this month of June brides, we are off tomorrow for the high country of Colorado to attend a wedding.  It’s a chance to see old friends who’ve been part of our lives for nearly forty years–the same friends who years ago used to ask me, “So, when are you guys moving back?”  I’ve lived in Montana now for twenty-three years, longer than I did in Colorado.  But, that is where we all raised our children together, the halcyon days, in retrospect, when we were at the top of our game, the prime of our lives.  Now, we come together with new hips and knees, surgical scars, and some terrible losses, in celebration of marriage of one of our kids.  It feels important to be there.  As Black Elk said:

Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of a person is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves.

I saw the new fingernail moon last night, right before bed.  Bright Mercury was somewhere nearby but the night’s storm clouds left only the moon to shine through.  Sunny skies and normal temperatures will be here upon our return late Sunday night.  We’ll get the sailboat in the water, and the motor on the aluminum fishing boat.  An entire summer spreads out in front of us now, feeling like a miracle.

The Miracle by Michael Goldman

It is not that
the sun comes up
or the earth goes around
or that the plants sprout
and take up rain
and flower and set seed
or that our hearts pound
five thousand times an hour –
It’s that we don’t have
to go out with tethers
to make the heavenly bodies
move correctly around
or caress the ground
and tease the stems upright
and separate the petals
or tap our chests
continually with little hammers
and we can put
our attention elsewhere.