Fed and rested, after an afternoon bouncing in these waves, I can savor the drama of watching from above, at a window safe indoors. Beach hair and a vacation state of mind, and the allure of an electrical storm out at sea.
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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.
I wonder if it’ll rain in the morning. I think I want it to rain. It’s not raining tonight. The sky, it’s the summer version of a snow sky, cloudy gray hiding the stars and the moon behind treetops. But my inner ear senses a hushed sound…soft and distant, almost-gushing…like raindrops.
I believe in grace, and I believe in souls, and I believe in God, and the holy refreshment that comes when we open our eyes from our dreams, and hear the pleasant patter of a gentle morning shower.
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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.
None of the words in my head tonight are words I should write. They’re words I’d delete in the morning. A glass of wine, and they’re the best words I have for the night. My best unspoken words.
[Okay…last night it wasn’t unspoken.]
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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.
I don’t know why I was running. Maybe I needed to get ‘home free’. Back to ‘base’. Maybe part of Hide n Seek. It was part of some game, and it was dark out. When I was a kid, I thought I was a fast runner (doubtful), and that thought was in my head as I ran down the sidewalk. I can remember that precise thought and I can still envision the cracks in the sidewalk, right under the street light. I could find the exact spot today. I don’t think it was the crack in the sidewalk that tripped me up. I think it’s that my upper body was feeling so very confident, it was pulling me faster than my legs could go. In any case, I fell (went flying) down and slid along the sidewalk, like a runner slides into home plate. But this wasn’t a baseball game, and my legs were wearing shorts and sliding along concrete, not the sandy dirt they use to line a baseball diamond. Yeah, my legs got all scratched up, bleeding, a big bloody mess, etc., and it was the end of the evening’s fun for me.
A lifetime ago, since I had that fall, and I think today about summer knees, and how bad my knees are nowadays. Maybe it’s the contrast and the awareness of my current shortcomings that made me write. Things wear out. Knees wear out. But that night, I was so confident I was a great runner, right up to the moment I realized I would, for sure, hit the pavement.
Maybe this one’s a salute to who we were as kids, to the confidence, to the knees, we had as kids. Yeah, on a warm summer’s night, many nights ago.
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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.
Hey, folks. Etikser here. Hi to all, and happy summer.
Thanks, WordPress, for fixing my Reader. ‘Cause I can use my Reader again in a way that’s not nearly as tedious. I don’t know the how or the wherefore. I just know I can keep up again, with the bloggers I follow, without scrolling and scrolling needlessly over material I’ve already seen. Don’t know how it happened or how it was fixed, but I very much appreciate the adjustment.
It’s a dark and cloudy November night, and you have to close your eyes to remember fireflies. Tonight. Tonight I’m missing the on/off drifting flicker of July’s fireflies. It was months ago, I know, but they were here in July, I’m so very grateful, they were here in July, flying and flitting here and there among us, and above us, like a bit of magic, among friends. Like a folk song with a picking strum. Like the notes my friend Laura taught me to play so many years ago. Like the sound of my favorite John Prine song. Like my sister’s laugh.
Ahh, I remember the year fireflies sparkled like magic amongst the highest leaves of the tallest oak trees, mixed with the glitter of stars in a clear night sky on the 4th of July.
Cold nights have their charm, they do, but I miss fireflies. Yet I wonder if I really miss the flying and flickering here and there fireflies, or just the dreamy whimsy of a summer evening.
I remember that spell when I listened to John Lennon interviews every night. It was a good spell, and it was a comfort to me. I remember when I used to walk in the evenings, and the last sun of the summer day made its way around me, through the season’s branches and leaves. It was a comfort to me. Winter nights and tall branches standing strong in the cold wind and the night sky, those were a comfort to me. Sitting outside, come July. Sitting outside late at night, the stars, and fireflies, and crickets, and me, and they’ll be a comfort. I trust it’ll all be a comfort, it’ll be a comfort to me.
Why are clouds so much more when they hover above the open sea? Something about the color of the ocean and the blue sky and summer cotton clouds, ahead, above, and all around. The sky and the ocean, similarly infinities.
Someone’s gazing at clouds from a spot on the shore, and I wish it was me. I can almost feel it now. And I wish it was me.
etikser 