Of summer left behind…

After dust and bones, filling the spaces in-between

Hello dear ones, I welcome you always with gratitude in armfuls, never with a certainty that you will return but deeply thankful when you do.

Summer is waning isn’t it, I am delighted that the wholly unbearable heat of August has now lifted, that all the melancholy sights and sounds resonant of autumn days to come wrap me in their whispers. Colours are returning in grateful sighing boughs.

Sometimes summer can be too loud, too lingering…

As I begin to write, rain is falling, a change in the air; the first golden flowers of Jerusalem artichoke¹ are swaying in the still warm, now blissfully damp evening light. The mountains are no longer diffused in heat haze, rather, they are stark and clear, an outline of foretelling painted as though with the hand of a child. Slate-grey undulating streaks across the horizon. They have breathed a last breath of summer as cool insistent drops close the space between two seasons.

Summer has ended… already I feel contentedly chilled, it is a brief comfort as I tidy the debris of ash from my eyes…

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In the last breath of August - remembering birdsong and green.

A cool wind has arrived ushering clouds. Clouds! Smokey-grey—minus actual smoke—low, gorgeous, soft like velvet cushions scattered over hills baked hard and uncomfortable from weeks of heat saturated airflow.

I am remembering birdsong on feathered wings not their silence, green grass not dust. This morning, once again, I hear birdsong, notes flushed with fresh green into sky.

I am remembering crickets not skeletal remains clinging to bleached grasses. Last evening I listened for crickets but heard only soft rain, I wait, hopeful, the season is not yet too old and tired for small rebirths.

I am remembering the hare with one white and one black ear that I have not seen in too many days. I cannot forget the scream I hear from the forest, I hope with every hope I can touch that my friend is not gone, I am scared to my bones in the waiting.

I am remembering summers that didn’t dissolve into shimmering heatwaves by the mere act of breathing. It is no longer necessary to look past what is visible to remember.

I am remembering the first day of fifty-six days holiday with no recollection of the days passing, neither, how they were filled, only that they were long and suffocating and exhausting. Today is the last.

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Everything is parchment drifting into dusk.

Briefly - If only, by some small change of subconscious direction, we could all be as deeply attentive to sound, scent, signs. That said, survival always, always, brings us back to the very foundations of living. Water, oxygen, food, comfort. After rain, I feel like survival is at last a possibility.

Somewhere in the world the word sommerfugl is used for the word butterfly, I believe it means summer bird—correct me if I am mistaken—I forget where I heard it said or read, the mystery is as delightful as the mystery of where the birds go when no water is left, and the mystery of how they know, so precisely, when to come back just before rainfall—And really, summer bird… just think about that!

Recently and often, I worry I feel less than I should, less empathy, less kindness, less gentleness, less love, less light, less dark, less beauty.

While driving back lanes—always my preferred route—on my way to the city train station to drop off Seth on his first ever lone voyage—three cities, five hours, two trains, three bags, ten tonne of nerves jangling, mine and his—with Rosie and her best friend—also considered family—Don McLeans’ American Pie is playing on the radio, three of us are singing along. The windows are open and our voices are ringing out into the hills from the small space with rowdy smiles because we know every infamous lyric, the pauses in between, even the chords are hummed and tapped. The song finishes amidst the whooshing of dry leaves in dust on dry lanes and an incredulous, wistful voice from behind me asking ‘is that really a thing, singing along to a song while driving, en famille?’ Two faces, quizzical, turn to look at him as if he has spoken forbidden words, as if he has suddenly arrived from a different world. One stares straight ahead fearful that her tears will be noticed as the notion of her orphan child never singing with his own family, on a journey, to a song on the radio they all know and love, cracks open her heart.

Perhaps I worry too often?

In dust and tears I bury another blackbird, two tiny, long-whiskered shrews and a beautiful stray cat the colour of milky coffee I find on the lane—cause of death possibly probably unnatural—with other victims of August. There have been too many.

And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me... You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure... It will be as if, in place of the stars, I had given you a great number of little bells that knew how to laugh”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

The château is for sale. A new generation will replace the old. Perhaps kinder dogs, perhaps not?

The Percheron are moved to higher meadows. Here they are less agitated by flies, their honey-coloured coats and creamy tails less twitchy. When I pass by I fall in love again with the shape they make on the horizon as the sun dribbles behind. I dare to hope they will remain with the hill when the old stones of the château are sold.

Somehow, in the slowness of lethargy, in the sultry heat, evening has slipped, the light has shifted and an hour of daylight has already disappeared into remembering too.

One evening in August you have an errand outdoors, and all of a sudden it's pitch-black. It is still summer, but the summer is no longer alive.” —Tove Janssen

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With endless and so much love

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A tiny part of what I have loved recently;

The prompt ‘lost and found’ given by

Caravan Writers Collective

was taken up by

Holly Starley

,

Teyani Whitman

,

Paul Corman-Roberts

and

Kendall Lamb

to name but a few, all wrote very different stories and all were delightfully compulsive, beautiful reads. You will find each of them below;

Lost and Found

Lost or Found.. it’s what we hang onto that Matters

Lost and Found Prompt

From the archives: Marriage, Found?

Jonathan Foster

wrote a haunting tale of a young boys fragility sharply contrasted by paternal cruelty, it is a deeply moving read, a quiet reminder that gentleness and imagination can endure, even in the shadow of violence.

Gold Coins On Deep Water

And

Kim.

whose prose is swoon worthy no matter which essay you choose to read, pick one, read them all… I am obsessed!

1. (Helianthus tuberosus), also called sun-root, wild sunflower, or earth apple and topinambor here in France.