It's Nearly Time to Write Again

        The light has shifted. It’s subtle, but it registers. For 20 something years that shifting light meant the start of school. For the next 20 years it meant the same for my children, along with the soft, steady hum of cicadas and crickets that seems to start with the rising of the mid-August sun and continue in monotone until its setting, and the odd cricket that makes it’s way into the house, throws its song across the room, bounces it off walls so you don’t know where to look.
In this bright, clear sunlight of late summer the rose petals appear somewhat temporary. As beautiful as before, but somehow giving the impression of a last hurrah, of an intensity that’s beginning to fade.
Crow calls have replaced the melody of the house wren. The whistle of the Kestrel Hawk seems louder, no longer competing with the symphony of birdsong. Within weeks the woody smell of drying leaves will make the sweet, intoxicating fragrance of black locust seem like a distant memory. 
From new mown grass to honey suckle to black locust to drying leaves, it’s time to think about writing again. Because for me, summer is the time to be out of my chair. It’s the time for digging in the soil, biking in the breeze, soaking in the sunlight. My brain needs a rest. It needs to unwind, wrap itself around exterior concerns. It needs to revitalize itself for that difficult job of going inside itself in search of the right word, the real problem, the honest phrase. I can see it coming, smell it, hear it. It’s just around the corner and I’m getting ready.