Prayers in the Bittersweet

The August Garden, 2023

The postscript of summer is heavy and sweet, laden with life but the vestiges hang brittle where bloom had once been so big, so soft. We feel the awkwardness of the in-between where days are warm and hot but it feels almost as if the garden is as anxious as us to slow down, to welcome cool, blustery days, to put the kettle on, to stay put for awhile with no expectation to bloom.

And we’ve felt enough of the year to feel like we’ve had enough…enough sadness, enough hard, enough tears.

The bloom has been loud and we’ve loved it,

but the rattlesnakes were loud too, and the garden didn’t go without them.

But the long light is lasting, the good things still going (Somehow),

and so will we.

We will delight in every blackberry-scented evening, every lone rose blooming, every drooping sunflower, every burst of the life meant for these postscript summer days.

We go barefoot, eat outside in the warmth, chance one last watermelon from the grocery store, memorize the feel of the warm garden stones, give the crickets a standing ovation, see how many swim days and sprinkler runs we can tally up…