Going Easy

Summer’s sugars, summer’s rot

Crows, at least a half-dozen, erupt into alarm call, emergency, around back of the house across the road where the husky is always jumping the fence and the son is pouring his life into bottles and onto the asphalt, truck leaking so much oil that nothing will ever grow after him. Big winds course through. Big, big tree with no leaves on it. The crows remain there in their ritual for days.

Small turtle tiddly-winked into the scrub by the tire of an SUV. And the one walking the shoulder, its mouth a rictus I perceive as horror. What was that at the centre of the turtle’s back? Was it damage? Was it cargo?

Every year, this time of year, the yellowing begins and death becomes the next lesson. The sweetness that precedes. The dyes you can make from what’s fruited. Next year’s flowers housed in this year’s going. The flying ants gather. The frantic wasps. The tinges start appearing in the ash tree. Beans chatter in their pods. Any sadness is a great love of life, that this chlorophylled world cannot remain forever.

Beautiful silver leaves upturning in wind. What remains untended is inflicted, repeated, dead tree, dead forest, dead species, this cycling, this addiction, seeking visions, seeking answers. Mourning doves in driveway puddles. Beauty of blue jay squawking. The mists each night.

Drumlins, grasslands, high water tables. All summer aiming the phone at the plants whose names and natures I don’t know. Going easy. Pumping up the bike tires. The few seeds that try to sprout in the pod.

Empty streets, then a sudden square full of people, then a sycamore like an elephant’s leg, then music in the distance, bouncing off the buildings, lake winking off to the west. Advice from a stranger. A way allowed to unfurl.

The dry, its grasses. Fear on unknown trails alone. Standing over the river, under elms, amid a good season of saskatoons, magpie and foxtail bringing tears to my eyes. To be back, to rest there for a while. What to remember, and what to forget.