“Summer set lip to earth’s bosom bare,
And left the flushed print in a poppy there.”
~Francis Thompson

Ah…. soaking up the heat, spoiled like a small child… laying in my back yard lounge chair with the grass freshly mowed, the soft moist smell of new mulch, the ferns gently swaying on the breeze… I attempt to simply enjoy the Now without thought of how long it took to get here or how quickly it will slip away into Autumn’s foreboding sadness.
This is what they had in mind when they made the CountryTime Lemonade commercials. Of course, summer in the city has charm of it’s own. Two or three doors down I hear a faint radio playing something from the 70’s as a man scrubs his car. One door down, I hear splashes in a pool, a lonely divorcee too cold and untrusting to allow friends into her life- she swims alone.And behind me is beautiful Esther, my 89 year old neighbor who lives alone and hangs her wash every morning just after dawn. Above me towers three levels of decks and I know that the fellow residents of this building could be looking down at how ridiculous I look on this lounge chair right now. I throw caution to the wind and sing along to some 80’s music on the radio anyway. Summer in our city is different in one way. We have the beautiful ever-present rumbling of Niagara Falls slightly in the distance. The smell of ions from the fast moving fresh water entrances you with the low rumble, the white noise that tells you, “you are home”. I think about the 130 years my wooden frame house has stood here just steps from the water and what the rumbling waters may have meant to the structure. Did it settle more quickly? It is tougher than other houses? Does it vibrate constantly, however so subtly, has it caused an electrical connection to slip apart inside the lathe walls? Wait a minute- don’t go to the darkside, Poppy! “We won’t awfulize or catastrophize today,” my psychologist would say in his low, calm and steady voice.
Alas, I think about my hosta collection and wonder if they love me as much as I love them.