sunset – etikser

When I was a kid, it seemed like summer got a running start at the 4th of July, and then reached its pinnacle in August. I remember August bringing the hottest days of the season, and the warmest, most restless nights. When you kicked the sheets and struggled for sleep with windows left open for cross-ventilation…crickets chirping outside and few cooling breezes to bring relief. It was the time for learning to swim underwater, for cook-outs with family friends (picnic tables, the public grill, and plumes of smoke that smelled of burgers, hot dogs, and charcoal). It was an August day when we went to the lake in the mountains. Surely, it was an August night when they wrote the song Summertime.

Now I’m all grown up, and then some, and August feels more like a cheerless transition.

But…the trees stand green, and the grass and shrubs hold strong, in the face of a merciless June and July. You can’t see it in the picture, but horses ran along a nearby fence, and stalks and stalks of green corn poised robust and plentiful enough to make my paltry six already-picked and drying corn plants at home stand a bit taller with envy. Sunset at 7:30 on a late August evening still has a bit of summery grace.

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On a warm summer’s evening … simple words … my favorite kind of words … packed with age-old nuance and memories.
Credit: The Gambler, performed by Kenny Rogers (1978), written by Don Schlitz.

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Mornings, I look to the tops of the tallest trees while I drink my coffee. I don’t know what I’m looking to see. Clouds and blue skies, I suppose. Circling birds, perhaps … a hawk or crow.

This time of year, fireflies party nightly up there, near the tops of the trees. I looked to the dark sky the other night to see if there were stars, and I saw stars flickering and moving. Not stars, silly me, but fireflies. A dazzling sight, the treetops and fireflies co-mingling with a starry sky.

Tonight, following a day that was hotter than summer days ought to be, and after an early evening rain that fell short of what was needed, the last light of day painted the sky a bright, colorful hue of yellow-gray. It was a noteworthy, beckoning sky, one you couldn’t miss. Then I noticed the house siding was unexpectedly lit with the brightness of the setting sun. An atmosphere that’s unique and embracing, radiant, and at the same time, turning dark. An atmosphere steaming with contradictions and serendipitous possibilities.

Sometimes when I first wake and glance about, inside the confines of the closed shades of my room, I see only the distressing loop of reality and worry. I should know to go outside those shades and look up for the promising possibilities I’d find in the breeze moving around the tops of the trees.

There’s this thing about serendipity, though. It comes as it wishes. You can’t count on serendipity, you can’t look to serendipity. It comes as it will.

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© Etikser. All Rights Reserved.
All photos and images here are my own.
They may not be used elsewhere or reblogged.
Please visit my other blog, Clover & Ivy, https://cloverandivy.wordpress.com.
I post mostly nature photos there.

Category: sunset

on a warm summer’s evening . . . 9

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on a warm summer’s evening … 2