Day-breaking clatter of cat stalking a moth until the wing dust disappears with self-satisfied lip licking. Thirsty work.
Tag Archives: season
Hayride
I could hear it before it arrived. I had been excited all day for carolling country style. Layers and layers of clothes, socks, jackets. Gloves. Boots. That knit cap under which my scalp itched. Warm was an understatement.
Somebody had spent some energy bucking a dozen bales of hay onto that flatbed trailer, an amount of energy I wouldn’t understand until my early teens when I helped my father in the fields.
Another bale’s worth covered the trailer floor. The jingling bells were handheld. A tangle of boots and legs made room for a few more of the same. I started reciting silent thanks for my cousins’ foresight of layers upon layers of clothing. The moving air and clear night was a thief to body heat.
Our family was new to the community. The more I watched friends rib one another and holler greetings, the more shy I felt. Until the singing began.
How anyone could hear us mumble carols through scarves and the volumn of the tractor, I have no idea.
I went caroling once more in my youth. It wasn’t the same on a balmy California night, door to door.
©2014 Sandra R. Davidson
Of a Settling
The storm examines each matter, bound or loose, living or dead. Seeds released in recent dry weeks drive into soil–now mud the rain makes. Too, those time capsules of life among grasses and leafy weeds rinse down with gust accelerate downpours.
Trees take early to energy conservation while tremors of each branch and stem twist and tangle to satisfy August’s dry, leafy itch.
September, too, litters the porch landing with chill-weak or spent moths. Spiders retreat to silken sacs of next year’s adventuresome arachnids.
All this is beautiful to my senses. I taste the coming storm to know if its promise will stay long enough before the next front shoves through. No lightening or thunder as in past weeks. No drum of hail.
Only a Sunday’s let of autumn rain to stay my obligations. Rock, rock, rocking with dogs at my feet, cats beneath the bedclothes, and, from the adjacent room, my love’s familiar exchanges.
My eyelids recognize the tide upon the window and l feel beneath me an easy rhythm, a glide back and ease forward.
(c) 2013 Sandra Davidson
A Layering of Perception 