August
20, 2018
Greetings from
the magic,
With each step
I run I pour my magic into the air. Each
footfall creates a vibration that changes the world. God leans closer to see what it is and smiles
summer on us.
I am in my
natural state. I pull on only the morning mist, beads of dew on my skin, and
run into the fog of predawn. The energy
created by my strides gives power to the lightning bugs. I call to the corn,
the blueberries. I don’t make their
sweetness, I only make it possible. I
run through the country roads, fueling the warm day, pulling the sun closer,
holding it longer.
This calendar
makes idle threats, but I am not intimidated.
I have the power older than dates on paper. I am Summersmith.
How else will
summer be? How else will the water know
that it should foam and splash at the sandy edges of the world? If I am not out to create the space where the
heat can fill, if I don’t swirl a cloud of starlings into the sky, if I am not
out running to send the message to the cicadas and the crickets, how else will
we hold this magic still in the middle of ice and darkness?
Summer cannot
just happen, it is not simply astronomy.
It is created each morning as I sip coffee on my deck, and then grows
stronger as I run the two-lane roads. I
go by your windows as you are waking up and you hear mourning doves, you feel
the soft breeze, smell the day and you know I am at work.
It happens
because seeing a cluster of deer walk through my yard still makes me feel like
something wonderful has just happened, like I am eight years old and this was
created just to amaze me. I know that
when I feel this it pulls summer to us.
I run between
the beans and the fences and the yards and the greenness flows out from me. I
run and run and run and flowers too beautiful to name burst from the
ground. Clusters of chickadees, yellow
commas against the shrubs, leap ahead of me to enjoy the warmth I create.
You stood on
your porch and listened to the rain on the roof, chuckling into the eaves, and
you were carried to when you were a child at your gramma’s, or when you were
camping, or when you had your first kiss, and it smelled like this day. Because somewhere out there, on shiny-wet strips
of macadam, I am running, splashing the magic, making a summer storm.
I run and run
and run. And heat lighting flashes and
the sound of a train floats into your dream undaunted by the screen in your
window. I run and the butterfly settles
on the leaf, and the sun turns shadows between branches into mysterious
daguerreotypes in the dirt.
I run and the
day lasts longer because it wants to, it hates to end, and the sun steps up its
game at the western end of the world promising to do it over tomorrow.
I can’t do it
alone, there are others too. The little
boy on his bike who is creating the world a block at a time, the four girls
running through the sprinkler, laughing in their bright bathing suits, turning
the yard into eternal June and July. The
old man who makes the smell of fresh cut grass.
The couple who are grilling chicken, playing ‘Moondance’ on the
stereo. Somewhere someone licks the drop
of ice cream escaping from the cone onto the back of their hand. Someone tracks sand into the house.
I run to soak
in the summer and radiate to the world and so you drive with your top down and
the music up. And the Frisbee floats to
an impossible catch and the grass feels like silk against your neck as you
stare up at the clouds and the water tastes like the garden hose, and it is the
best.
I run and run
and run and run and it is summer and it is summer and it is summer and it is
always, forever summer.
This morning I
am cupping it all in my hands, my skin the color of August, and I look into the
pool of summer there and see my face reflected in it and know. I am Summersmith.
Hope
this finds you with the windows open,
David
Copyright
© 2018 David Smith
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