A Passing

our memorial garden where I sit and knit and watch the passing shadows

It never really changes in the Adirondacks, though summer concedes, early, to fall, and then all goes to cold, and snow, and howling winds...and back again. The samenesses of Julys and Augusts for all the generations I can think of and all those to come...tart blueberries dropping in a pail held by some child or other, startling fragrance of the lemon lilies, glinting sharp sun darts caught in the little ripples of a little lake...and mountains, soft and primeval, sloping from sky to water as great sleeping beasts might, in a dream of great beasts.

Late August is often a sad time for me. The crows fly low, muted. The dark, though not bitter yet, comes sooner each day, minute by lost minute. Leaves fall through the raindrops, bright and dead...

And my little girl grows up, and summer ebbs in diffuse light through ancient pines, that were here before me and will be here still, long after I'm gone.