Summer Sliding In

Evabird, all weekend we’ve been in the Catskills with friends. There’s laughter and bare skin and trees taller than any you’ve ever seen. Yesterday we sat by the lake, and I shaded you with my body. Shadows, I told you, this is what the sun makes of us. The pond thrummed with the sound of mating frogs, and the sky changed over and over: stone to white-wall to bluer than blue.

Last night, thunder storms rolled through and I was scared that they’d wake you. Or maybe I was just scared. So I took you from your crib and held you in bed with me. Come morning, the raindrops glistened in the green, and we walked down the crooked lane and past a field of yellow flowers where a beat-up old piano sits. YARD SALE, a sign read, but when I asked the woman how much she wanted for something, she said, “Nothing. It’s all free. Just take it,” and then I didn’t want anything.

The days are already getting so long. Your third season out in the world, and nights, I give you spoons full of pears, then bathe you and, finally, watch as your dreams pass over your face. O sweet bird, I imagine some day it’ll be these trees and this thrum and this rolling sky that inhabit your dreams. Summer will slide in, settle around you, and you will hold all of this somewhere deep inside you, and it will give you all the peace you need.