Summer Gatherings

I listen for the hum of quiet summer gatherings

in a private field of fragrant flowers

full of family and close friends with perennially

pleasing flower arrangement hopes.

Maybe I was born 100 years too late.

I live in a small world that is almost too large.

I have two sights. I see the stream of traffic

out my living room window of my new city

and I see a web strung in the damp dew of morning

of my childhood home holding beautiful art legacies

and the woodstove warmth of family comfort.

I hold dearly to the eternal tomes and talismans 

of summer smiles from hillside gardens that are often hard

to see. Maybe an old kind of awareness will catch me.

I’ll follow shaded, Western redcedar spices in the air and get caught

by a fixed-weight, summer hammock woven-memories leader,

and soft, hook scents from alder

campfire smoke fragrances that frame

my old and new scenes as I teach

my children—life is more than a trail between dreams.