Tiptoe Through the Tulips

In summer, we live on what we grow.

Greens for the stomach and blooms for the heart.

Thick soil, ripe with worms and beetles, spread with the spectrum of colours, a riot of blooms and shoots.

So short the time of air thick with bird song, with ever-blowing samaras and cypselas.

Our hand-crafted greenery can feel that pulse, that frantic pace of the living and blooming.

Things grow in a riot of intensity, greedily soaking up every ray, every breath of sun-warmed air.

As they speed, I slow.

I stand in the heavy scent of peonies, of honeyblossoms-

Close my eyes and gather warm memories for colder days.

My cat also has a deep appreciation for tulips and associated greenery

There are few things I love more than the rich, heady scent of a sun-warmed garden.

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For more plants of power, my fantasy novel, The Guests of Honor, is available here. Its sequel, With Honor Intact, can be found here.

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The Sun at Midnight

The owls are confused this time of year.

You can hear them, dazzled by the unfamiliar light that stretches over the grounds they hunt.

The other birds are more pragmatic, less concerned with the unfamiliar-

-More concerned with gorging-

-Before the shadow cast becomes the reality.

We stand sometimes and watch the frantic motion as the sun lazily traces its path between the mountains-

-Barely touching the horizon before it neatly races to the other side, a feat of the particular magic of summer.

By queer chance, both the winter and the summer solstice have passed on days that I share my thoughts.

They are strong tides, those days of light and darkness.

To stand beneath the sun at midnight, it is hard to remember the weight of the dark.

Even then, even in the lazy haze of warmth and light-

-The shadows of the trees still stretch outwards.

Still reach towards the time that is passing back towards survival and the knife’s edge of moonlight.

So passes the light and the shadows cast beneath it

All light or none, the North is a place beautiful in its extremes.

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For more extremes of various kinds, my fantasy novel, The Guests of Honor, is available here. Its sequel, With Honor Intact, can be found here.

Catch of the Day

On the cape of the island, you could grab the plate-sized crabs with your bare hands.

A little wading in the surf and you’d walk back out with enough to feed communities.

Of gulls and herons.

Of bears and men.

Crabs don’t come to the hand as quick anymore.

Most things don’t.

I’ll watch them sometimes, the ones who wade out and the ones who take a full operation out on the water.

Every year they come back with less for their efforts.

The crabs come and go.

So do the strangers who take their catch and leave.

The communities stay.

Still hungry.

The nets are often older than the crews

I think a lot about the way the shape of the north changes… and the way it remains the same.

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For more reminisces on scarcity and abundance, feel free to check out my fantasy novel, The Guests of Honor, is available here. Its sequel, With Honor Intact, can be found here.

Ephemera

A thousand soft yellow flies died in the crevices of my window last night.

I don’t know what kind they were or where they came from, but they formed a great ball of noise and movement that filtered over the front lawn-

-and ended, futilely, in the space between the screen and the pane of glass.

I didn’t see them the next day.

Like the soft, sweet blossoms on the bank above the creek-

Like the migratory birds that drink from the pond-

They carry a single, driven moment of intensity and vanish once it has passed.

They are obvious ephemera-

Violently here, then gone.

All moments pass this way, though.

All seconds and minutes and hours.

It pays to watch the progress of the sun in the sky.

The slow, sleepy waking of a butterfly warming from the cold of the night.

These are the moments before the beat of a butterfly’s wings

I am a greedy seizer of passing moments, in stories and in life.

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For more moments of intensity, my fantasy novel, The Guests of Honor, is available here. Its sequel, With Honor Intact, can be found here.