September Picnic at DeLaveaga
Observing our unendingly exhausted souls,
I'm grateful all the same to have our sink unclogged
(the plumber like a Scotsman we have come to know
who plants a kindergarten of baby redwoods,
builds things, voice like a dram of finest single malt,
Laphroig once shared beside the river
all awash with city lights). Grateful to have one more
(if only one—an ache of absence at the other end)
incredible rendition of that metamorphic play, after
another evening's consultation with the trees
and cloths narrating light on the table of sturdy,
reassuring wood. Lustrous cotton woven in France,
underlying our summer salads, generously layered cake.
And maybe as I write owls are gathering there,
above the stilling town, the stone blue ocean
a marginal note with maybe a little sailboat or two,
guileless as children's drawings (a few peaky pencil lines,
a daub of white), as nothing else is anymore.
Making a grocery list before we go: "something like
twenty shrimp," fresh mint (which I somehow forget),
feta, tomatoes still holding summer in them—
tasting of Greece, of the island we visited
where a long ago favorite book was set, about
a kind of Prospero manipulating love and loss.
Things we're all facing now, so I have my heart set
on that shrimp with summer tomatoes and oregano,
another hour or two there among the watching trees,
before the summer and the rest of it comes to an end.
image: Christie Cochrell
