say something about August.

well,

it sweats and sticks
then is gone too quick
just when you begin to tolerate it;

if Sunday Scaries were 31 days in a row;

a sudden carpeting of yellow leaves on green grass — current fall rate: 1 leaf per minute —my instrumentation: a pair of 5+decades-old eyes;

there will be no prolific fruiting on the two black walnut trees this year — and i am guilty with a schaudenfreude regarding the red squirrels;

the starlings stack the power lines and camouflage themselves in the green tree tops
this, a rest stop in their annual migration

those synchronized swimmers of atmosphere,
a singular heartbeat, a murmuration, of hundreds of individuals, these beautiful communists.

i have become invested with the observation and documentation of phenology:

i expected them this week.

---

my interior Self has wandered off

and i am experiencing an unshakable ennui,

of my life as “groundhog’s day” — the film, not the day.

there is a retrograde, within this Retrograde;

— and, it won’t respond to either your or my own admonitions, warnings, and encouragement

or to these reins, that — I, cannot hold, i fear

i need anchorage.

human anchor.

to be held,

to be held down.

to be held, down.

can you hold it down for me, just this once?

can you hold me down.

hold it down.

---

---

oh, August,

in august,

if you call, i will not answer
if you text, i must leave you on read
if you email, then just fuck you, kindly,

until / i feel myself again —

maybe in September, more likely, late October,

but if you write me a letter,
i will correspond, not with many – or perhaps even, any, words at all.
but with gifts from my home and this spot of land i occupy

— a strand from one of my wind chimes — that one sound of my garden may also live in yours;
— a book of paper with or without words for you to write in — or to read some words that i’ve also once read;
— a mini piñata filled with “penny” candy that does not melt in the US mail whether sent Out West or Back East in august;
— earrings or a brooch i no longer feel compelled to wear, but that i promise, i once truly treasured;
— a fresh staghorn sumac bouquet for your bedside, or desk, or sill, or for your freshly-made lemonade;
— something from one of my altars for your altar — that our magic is addition, not subtraction — both multiplying and dividing.
— postage stamps to write to me — and to others, again / write me again, — you, dear ones who see that i am still alive, that i am still me, even in august //

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i am scarred in each of the twelve months
in some way,
after five decades of living, of course, i am.
there’s no escaping calendrical memory — or the humility of memories lost
until it’s involuntary

but still /
i prefer months of beginnings
not endings,

oh August, please, just go away

i have never been a
“don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened” person.

i want to weep now.

maybe, i can smile later.

---

keep the middling months

give me only the beginnings:
rather, give me the ides of
June
October
April
and

December, the trickster of both beginnings and endings.