Shorter, cooler days. A front on summer’s coattails. Soft rain hides a full moon tonight and the chickens whisper chirps at me, asking for voice recognition, as I close the tractor door in the darkness. It’s only me, I tell them. The neighbors mentioned a fat coyote crossing our road yesterday.
Before bed, Chas rolls onto his back on the bedroom floor, staring up at the swirling red snake mobile that I hung from the air vent yesterday.
“How do do dat?” he asks, smiling with wide, twilight eyes.
We are spending mornings, afternoons and evenings outside. I rarely am at the computer, these days. I wonder how I could make more time to write any more than I already do (in my journal), amazed at people who can ignore distractions and faithfully blog on…slacker that I am, I sit slackjawed in a long red canoe at night on the lake, breathless atop placid waters. Our city glows under the indigo sky, buzzing with the current of hungry bats, evening traffic whirring above us on the avenues. We slice through the coke bottle water, a parade of shrieks and babble as our children narrate a joy I’m too grown-up to blurt out. So I just paddle on, smiling, as Chas leans over the bow, dragging his little hand in the water, tiptoe on his flip-flips.