Fierce. Like the maw of a lion. The sun, this summer has been. Beating down so relentlessly I want to jump into its mouth and fry like those little crisps you eat there in that cold and drizzly country of yours, or on the subway train, the sweaty half dead commuters littering the floors with the tiny greasy crumbs. That’s how you feel sometimes when there is no rain and you think you will never see it again. You wander the villages and dirt roads half-naked and ashy grey with a little tin plate hoping to catch just one little drop and keep it there, a tiny teardrop of a lake on a plate you can lose yourself in.
Then suddenly July turns into August and September and the maw opens up but this time gushes rain and rain and rain until you want to go back into the maw of fire and never leave.
It was so cold today when I left work and walked outside. I saw some leaves turning red at the top of that tall tree. It was too breezy and children I see are going back to school. The trains the buses the cars and the roads are packed again. Soon there will be that unbelievable sharp blue and gold crispness and appleness again.
Oh where did it all go, the summer fun of beaches and water and picnics? The long leisurely walks among the fragrant rose arbors, and those roses, in all those lipstick colors and the waving and tossing of all the summer flowers. Waving hello and goodbye and hello and goodbye again.
Caught in the rain yesterday walking in the park with my groceries. No one there. The trees massive and happy and the shrubs wide and deep like walls for giants to leap…the air misty and shadowy and I could be in England in that grand London park or I could be in the Cotswolds chasing rabbits again by that meandering brook or by Dylan Thomas’ “holy streams”.
I walked through masses of goldenrod six feet tall mounds of black-eyed Susans, whole prairies of them, the Helianthus, all manner of the black and brown-eyed sunflowers like models strutting down the golden highways of America saying hello and goodbye and hello and goodbye again.
The rain fell harder and harder and the gold all around me was honey and amber and yellow cartoon crayons, golden chariots of fire, golden gods, girls and boys, and the gold was so gold and the yellow so yellow….. if you don’t think you like yellow walk in this field now of golden-hued flowers, the susans the sunflowers and the robin blue ones, like late delphiniums hiding. As though a piece of blue sky shattered and crumbled itself in.
The gold the gold the gold of that fierce and fiery voracious sun the sun I cursed on July and August noons, the unforgiving sun has given me this tumbler of gold dust this forest of filigree this carpet of moon this wet yet fiery afternoon and home I go lamenting already the sun the massive fierce maw of the lion the piercing eyes of the sky watching watching watching you and the beating of my heart is so loud so rough so pulsating the whole rainy golden park is one fierce scream of unspeakable joy……
whennothingworks 