A Deep River Year 
August 20, 2014   

 Now in the midst of August we are glad for simple, ordinary hours.   There are a few left this summer, days to savor sunlight and silence and a little time to sit and watch clouds drift by.   Henry James, a 19th century American philosopher, once observed that the two most beautiful words in the English language may be these:  "summer afternoon."    Those words should be spoken softly, almost dreamily, as if we were Mole and Rat in The Wind in the Willows, drifting down the river in their little boat, glad to be alive even for just a little while.

Of course it is possible to be content in the dead of winter, too.   But here, in Connecticut in these waning days of August, we dwell in a season of life that asks little of us.   No shoveling the walks, no heavy clothes to put on and take off, no stoking of the fire.   It is not necessary to hurry from the house to the car.   It is enough to mosey along, and sometimes just to stand there, bare feet in the grass, grateful for loveliness all around.    And this loveliness today is bright with color.

Winter is painted with a palate of gray and brown and white.   By February we are hungry for a world that is green, and the purples and reds displayed in the promises of the garden catalogs seem slightly lurid, almost erotic.   But here, in the heart of August, the zinnias and sunflowers are all joy.   Enormous scarlet and magenta dahlias and pink hibiscus line the garden fence.    And marigolds, bright as school buses, wave in the breeze.    What a gift to be surrounded by such color!  Dogs and cats and many other mammals, it is said, are somewhat color blind.   How sad for them!  Birds and butterflies see the colors we do, but ultraviolet light, too.   Watch a hummingbird flit from the scarlet runner beans to the purple butterfly bush, and you'll be a believer.   Listen carefully, and you may hear them whir by, singing "summer afternoon, summer afternoon!"

Summer Afternoon

Dream a summer afternoon
and save it
for some winter night
whose barren threads are loveless,
cold, and gray as death.
This dream will fill the thinnest air
with a perfume of marigold,
pungent as the warm earth,
and it will calm the whistling wind
with the drone of an August night,
the mysterious orchestra of insects
playing their sweet concerto while they can,
a love song under stars.
And there will be colors,
so gaudy and wild that we will laugh
and gather blazing bouquets
glorious as any hearthfire
to paint the walls of our sleeping.
And the bees will follow us,
drunk with pink and red and gold,
carrying their secrets to a place
where they will work their holy alchemy.
And this golden honey, given and kept,
will be for us a taste
of warm and lazy afternoons,
a luminous rainbow of a dream to feed us
until our summer comes again.

--Timothy Haut, August 20, 2014