20 aug 2004
August
by Nanci Olesen
August.
The opposing of peach and sugar,
and the sun inside the afternoon
like the stone in the fruit.
The ear of corn keeps
its laughter intact, yellow and firm.
August.
The little boys eat
brown bread and delicious moon.
—Frederico Garcia Lorca
I don’t want anything to change.
Oh, except that. Yes, on November second
I want THAT to change.
But the rest of it, the summer light,
the flowers in the yard, the kids sort
of ambling around the house at loose ends,
that I want to KEEP. One week left. It
has been lovely.
Our car was full of crumbs and sand and
sticky juice. We put three thousand miles
on it and we saw our close friends in their
habitats. We contrasted the way HIS family
acts with the way MY family acts as we
drove from one midwestern state to another.
And finally we arrived back here as our
own sweet little group of five who had
had a long and lovely adventure together.
We looked in at our house, so tenderly
kept by our friends, and we washed our
clothes and started cooking.
The mail is all organized now, but the
tasks are numerous before school starts.
We jump on our bikes and ride and ride,
with the hopes that we can out-ride the
summer or that if we stay in summer-motion,
the summer itself will stay with us: the
poofy clouds, the sounds of radios outdoors,
the smell of grills in the evening, the
swimming buoys at the beach.
Too soon it will all be memories. The
challenge of gracefully moving from one
season to the next lies close at hand.
Good luck to us all.
—Nanci Olesen
producer and host, MOMbo: 1990-2007 |
