Surprise Honeybee Landing

honeybee brushes my lips

     taste of forest flowers

After a week of extreme heat, "normal" Indiana summer weather returned yesterday bringing a much needed rain. To celebrate, I sat outside on the wet lawn chair to watch the sunset, which was spectacular--all gilded and bronze and rose. The sun itself had disappeared into clouds whole, but banks of cumuli reflected a beautiful gold for a good half hour. In fact, now that I think of it, the colors of sky reminded me of holy cards where Jesus or Mary ascend, floating on backlit and radiant clouds. At dusk, the crickets thrummed their love songs again, joined by the very early arriving cicadas. At  one point the cicadas produced a crescendo of sound that was, in its way, reassuring. For now at least, all's right with the world.

An Almost Encounter with a Potentially Odiferous Creeter

young skunk

slinks under porch struts—

splash of waxing moon

I have always loved the bewitching hour of twilight--another reason I liked Alaska so much. At midsummer, twilight there could last for four or five hours. 

Twilight often rewards us with a panoply of pink and purple hues along the western horizon. Plus a backlit, blue-white sky that makes you feel that by merely walking far enough, you can enter it. The dark seems to rise from the ground up, as though the trees and bushes are ferrying a black coolness toward the sky. 

Twilight is also a great time to see many of the creatures that share our world. The skunk I saw was young and came out too early to search for food. From my first peripheral vision observation,  I was convinced he was a cat, so I paid him no mind.  But then when he started to crawl under an apartment porch, I turned and got a full look, yep stripe in center of the back, and bushy, mostly white tail.

Speaking of twilights, this is the official end of my haiku year. Yesterday really, but when the temperature niggles 100 degrees, my energy level plummets.  I still plan to post but more occasionally. 

The practice of haiku--what does it offer one? Specifically this dory-one: an immersion in nature, a focus in living in the moment--this one particular, fleeting moment, and the discipline of whittling language down to the essential, and rarely, the exact right words.

Am I there yet? No way. But like all journeys--take hiking, for instance--it involves many steps, some arduous calf-busting plodding uphill, up-mountain, swatting the gnats away, or trampling and sinking into the rich swampy muck....oh, I'm getting carried away...but the journey continues.