the summer light

Trying to come up with a new way to talk about summer feels like trying to be Shakespeare: a fruitless endeavor that reminds you that someone, somewhere, has already said what you meant to say.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? No, that's been done.

I had a midsummer night's dream about you, brought on by the heat and perhaps too much wine. No, that concept has been done.

But to be in a world with so much light! Every day is a challenge to find the words, just the right words of thankfulness and light.

I wake up to a song about kissing the break of day, but that moment is gone. The day has already broken: the gentlest light of the day comes after the break, seeping through the cracks in the sky created by humidity.

In this light, even the brown grass is inviting, just the spot for a picnic.

A family quilt made in the early 1900s by four unmarried women—small, even stitches as they talked about everything but their desire to be married—this could be spread on the brown grass and there could be a picnic of strawberries and cream.

Hours later, at bedtime, darkness has just barely come as I turn on my bedside lamp to read for a few minutes before going to sleep. I think of how childlike it feels to go to bed with the sun just set, but it feels late to me and there is no one here to read me a bedtime story.

We tell ourselves stories in order to live: hasn't that one been said before, too?

In the summer, there is so much light, and there are so many stories waiting to be told. This is what I can say about summer right now that doesn't feel worn out.