Tremulant Retrospect

The plain days of the northern hemisphere

that have lingered in sunlight with those broad stretches

of dusk reaching beyond a moment's possession,

as it has been and started as small as a garden with the grandeur

of the solstice erupting along with the bugs and the bats

that followed, quickly darting amongst the trees ingesting 

swaths of night sky in a full display of all but without an alarm

that comes from an overtly obvious answer;

during a heat wave a skunk did it's part, dropped scat

in the coils of the sweating garden hose while a swallowtail

discovered rebirth on the screen of the garage window;

what July merely had to say about this from an aging man

who learned to talk even slower to his dog who lives ever

within the green chatter of the grass, like cold spring water

pouring into his blue bowl; the later recess of August--

a final flowering push-- asters and rough blazing stars just where

I might have wanted to look, while always my cat's sights

set on the mice in the garage. Poor him. Or poor me.

With broom and dustpan in hand, I wonder what depth

might lay in those persieds as I tend toward the expansive surface,

breezily asking where nebulas start and nestings end,

somewhere between day and night, activity and rest, 

while always a clustered pitch inside carried and carrying,

not knowing the difference between big and small. Singularities

being my residence, these quaint noticings with a few hunches,

words or thoughts, some tranquil measurement found here

inside myself. There's another flinty in the side glance,

likely the months' final visit from the hummingbird.