Summer Subsides

This time of year always reminds me of change, anticipation, apprehension. I struggle with my metric for successful summers and wonder if I could have, should have done more.

Cabin life has been rewarding, centring, lonely, refreshing. For most of my life my grandparents themselves felt like home, and now I feel closest to them, to home, when I am there.

Coffee in hand, I breathe in the salt air as I watch the whales in the bay. I picture them with me, my grandmother hanging clothes or knitting, and my grandfather on his CB radio connecting all along the eastern coast. Later, a rum (Bacardi white for her, Old Sam for him) and coke would go down singing hymns while we roar with laughter in the company of our closest relatives, or maybe just while watching Wheel of Fortune (and vigorously participating, if the satellite dish would cooperate).

I forgot to mention the coffee is decaf though, so not all is ideal in this weird memory-fantasy hybrid. All the same I'm grateful for that space, my little corner of the world where I feel most at peace, and I look forward to summers (and maybe eventually some winters) there forevermore.

Etched map of your face
Contour lines across decades
Heavy on my mind

Calls traverse coastlines
Radio static dreamscape
Vast dusk melody

Seven salt shores sailed
Still seeking sentient stories
Sinking seaside stone

Celestial bodies
Occult our sought providence
Bright aeon renewed

Grey-blue water sings
Surrounds us in everything
Disregards the spring

Placid lake repose
Forty winks to dream of her
Pine sweet ashen glow