Mid-summer Days

Here we are in

The heat and humidity are here too. And instead of complaining about it, this summer I am celebrating it. I keep reminding myself of how brief this season is. Already we’ve passed the summer solstice and daylight is beginning to shorten.

I’ve also been watching the weather in other parts of our country and our world and feel so blessed to live here where we get occasional breaks from the heat and some rain, even though we could certainly use more rain.

This morning I took a walk at French Regional Park with my camera and 100-400 mm lens. I wanted to photograph the water lilies in bloom. A few stray sprinkles fell from the sky as I walked and the breeze cooled my skin.

Not only did I feel that I was soaking in the summer goodness, I felt that I was soaking in the beauty all around me.

The Ponds

Every year
the lilies
are so perfect
I can hardly believe

their lapped light crowding
the black,
mid-summer ponds.
Nobody could count all of them —

the muskrats swimming
among the pads and the grasses
can reach out
their muscular arms and touch

only so many, they are that
rife and wild.
But what in this world
is perfect?

I bend closer and see
how this one is clearly lopsided —
and that one wears an orange blight —
and this one is a glossy cheek

half nibbled away —
and that one is a slumped purse
full of its own
unstoppable decay.

Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled —
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing —
that the light is everything — that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.

— Mary Oliver

Savor These Days

I intend to savor every single day, and brave the heat to take walks and bike rides and sit on my deck swing and savoring the sounds and sights of the abundant life that is all around us.