Sit Down To It

A thousand and one moments will step in front of your ability to do that. Some of those moments are dog walks, good dinners, fresh air, happiness. There are also the moments of dishwashing, standing in front of the microwave, pumping gas, waiting in line. That's all fine, just a plea - take me with you. Snatch a moment of words from between some other moment, and another, and let my eyes rest where yours once did, tell me some small thing that proves that we have the ability to be two places at once, any time. In front of the computer at work, and on the California coast, or some mountain peak somewhere, or trapped in traffic in sympathy with our very best friends. Anywhere but here.

I didn't get to the raspberry bushes until after that part of the yard had been watered. Last year the berries ripened one by one, most of those few ruby cells tasteless in spite of their color. This year they come in clumps, hidden deep in the overgrown canes, sweet and sun-warmed. Everything is going wrong tonight, in spite of the late evening warmth, the light clouds that will catch one of those vivid summer sunsets. Picking raspberries from the wet canes is like brushing tangled hair, water dripping from the leaves onto my forearms, little drops soaking through my jeans. I come away with a whole pint of them, thinking about how Tom was right about how we should have thinned the canes in the fall, but I wasn't so bold then with the garden, more inclined to leave things as they were for fear I'd only make them worse. I let the mint bully me and take over the greenhouse, the hollyhocks that blocked the walkway to the barn did the same. Now the mint in the lettuce beds is a weed, ripped out with everything else that needs to go.