Incipient summer

Opalescent clouds


Yesterday I propelled myself outdoors, down the street. By the park entrance stand lilacs. There lay a bowl of fragrance, incipient summer. It directed me toward Lilac Way.

That's the name my daughters gave a track from the southeast corner of town through an old meadow. A farmstead used to stand there, but only a clearing remains on the side of a hill. Yesterday I passed a man and two dogs emerging from the undergrowth. Investigating their trail, I discovered an abandoned stairway (rural_ruin) descending a low limestone cliff.

Periwinkle covered the ground below. Remembering a trick from childhood, I plucked a flower and sucked the bottom to extract a pip of nectar.

Aroma and bees hovered around wild apples blossoming in shining warmth. Small opalescent clouds cast drifting shadows from a pearly sky.

By the river beavers had built a new lodge under a sprawling willow. I clambered along one limb and sat with legs dangling while a yellow warbler foraged through the outer branches. Whirligig beetles scrawled circles below. One sandaled foot dipped accidentally into coolness, reminding me how, in an effort to photograph trapezebear last June, I fell from that very branch and got soaked to the waist.





Whirligig beetles scrawled circles