Tag Archives: summer

These weeks

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My new year starts now.
Tomorrow, early up, get a run in,
( I mean that is the plan),
pack up the boys,
and walk in with the two crates of work I meant to do this summer.
But let’s be honest,
(if that’s what we’re going to do),
I haven’t touched those suckers since I put them in my bedroom,
sometime near the end of June.
Not sure how long I will last tomorrow.
Be it an hour or six, to set up the rhythm,
maybe I’ll wait to make my coffee till I get there.
So that the room smells of the deeply roasted
french pressed coffee, I require to put my teacher face on.

But I end this year tentative -
After a summer worth talking about.
It is rare for me to not be excited about the fall,
about the crisp settling in-
about the colors changing,
about apples measured in pecks and bushels.
about the prospects of shoes.
I mean, I won’t wear shoes that require socks or stockings till -
perhaps October the first,
so long it has been that I have lived in New England,
and believe that one should expose their manicured toes,
till at least the oaks start to turn.

But no, I am not thrilled for this new year,
this is a bit of dread.
And I’m not sure if it’s because the energetic one
begins his new school-
but then, the small one does too.
Perhaps, it is because, like every summer,
I feel like I haven’t even begun to finish all I meant to do.
Or maybe there is a darker shade of grey,
no not the book I avoided all summer,
(because dammit,I get my smut from a third wave feminist magazine)-
Maybe there is something darker besides the night that grows longer.
Or perhaps, after eight years of grown-up September,
I’m just not ready to let my summer go.

where I look-

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There is perfection to be found,
in lyrics, and language.
in paragraphs, and stanzas,
in chapters set in far away jungles
with characters whose names I can’t pronounce.

In your three-year old, as he sits cross-legged,
shaved ice in hand listening to musicians.
Perfection in the way your five-year old,
looks just like your baby brother did at that age.

Mostly it is in the songs that play,
The timing that’s just right,
The way summer feels when your windows are down,
the way the sky turns purple,
how the clouds go pink.

How the song is just for you,
as you make your way down a road so familiar,
that you let your mind wander,
down that road a ways,
to a whole other place and time.

To the the swelter. . .

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Heat makes me all crazy.
Or, more crazy-
The haze and the
breathing in of
ozone.

Makes my temper rise
quicker,
my patience
grow
thinner.

I hate the way everything
sticks
to everything else,
or how the car seeps
heat and the ac doesn’t touch it.

Today,
and the only
solution,
is hot dogs,
and kids running around
in their underwear,
and ice cream.
And a beer, cold.
And the sound from the blades
of an old box fan,
that quiets the crazy.

All the things I am in love with right now.

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Don’t everyone freak-out at once. But, I am going to be super cheery right now.

No. No.  You haven’t clicked on the wrong blog. And don’t worry, it’s okay I’m sure I’ll be mad at the world, or the media, or the political sphere – anytime now –

But for this minute . . . Things I’m loving .  . .

Afternoons with Keegan. Keegan and I have barely had anytime together on our own. Read the rest of this entry

It Never Fails . . .

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. . that on the fist night of summer, and no matter how old I get, I feel like I’m still eighteen. I feel like I have ten weeks ahead of me to do everything I need to do before everyone goes off to college. I feel like I want to stay out too late, party too much, and drive in cars that go too fast.  I feel like I want to walk on train tracks, throw rocks in rivers, go to mid-day movies, and spend hours doing nothing at all.  I feel like I want to sleep in late, go to the beach mid-day, and come home too late for supper.  I feel like I want to hang out around a camp fire long past mid-night and sing out-of-key Pearl Jam songs. Read the rest of this entry

links I love

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One I’m suffering from crippling writer’s block – and to be honest, I’m okay with it right now.  With the new school year just 10 days away, my brain isn’t really into waxing poetic. Instead, I have dozens of ideas knocking around in my brain, and no desire to commit those ideas to the page.

Tonight, to help me along, I made a jar – a blog jar, like a chore jar, but you know for grown-ups with a freakish love of new media.  Tonight I picked links I love — so I’m passing on some good stuff I’ve stumbled across recently–

For the parenting and teacher types who stop by here, an interesting analysis of teen behavior.

For my fellow bleeding hearts, a link that’s been kicking around FB all day, a look at how hollowed the area of the new community center really is. By the way more on this soon, I’m kinda pissy about the first amendment thing, I’m entirely pissy how certain folks are making hay of this -

For my friends with too many tomatoes - a homemade tomato soup

Again for the teacher types – a woman with a lovely organized classroom – she is an elemntary teacher, but I’ve been working her tips in all summer.

Finally a little something that I’ve been dwelling on this week. Eminem’s  new video is absolutley one of the most beautiful videos I’ve seen in a long time.  But, as Jezebel puts it, “It’s not a public service announcement, it’s just a perspective.”