there’s a stillness a quiet resignation as summer fades
the trees slump in the August heat a few surrendering to the inevitable shades of sage, amber, crimson…
leaves break free first to dance with the wind
first fruits of autumn’s harvest
first to return to Gaia’s embrace
~kat
The leaves of this red maple tree at the edge of the woods have always turned well before autumn becomes official. No deep frost needed…no cool temperatures. It may even be a bit earlier this year than last year. I’ve been watching it transition in late summer since it was a sapling. The first year I was worried, but as the years have passed and the tree has grown taller, I have come to expect it.
I decided to research this to find out why. I discovered that this has been happening all over. There are various reasons given. Depends on who you ask. Some say it is excessive heat, some say draught. Some say too much rain. And some simply blame it on global warming.
I also discovered a fascinating fact about red maples in general. Their gender can be a very fluid thing. Some are primarily male, some are female, some are primarily one or the other with a few flowers of the other gender on the same tree. And then there are those trees that that shift from one gender to another. Polygamodioecious hermaphrodite trees…imagine that!
a few months from now I’ll be thinking of summer these long hot days…and spring, the warmth that it brings
when the trees are stripped bare I’ll be longing for green, with dreams of cool rain, and flower dense plains
from beneath woolen layers of long-johns and sweaters I’ll peer out my window to bleak, with little to do but drift off to sleep
the heat swelt of summer is making me wonder when this fierce inferno will end…
come brief autumn respite, though lovely you’ll exit too soon for my liking for now temps are spiking
I shouldn’t complain there’s nothing to gain by wishing away these hot humid days
with hummingbirds chirping and spring babies growing the Tom’s, Jennie’s, deer and the crows
though summer drags on winter, likewise will tarry each extreme has its cons and its pros
I would miss each one’s splendor might as well just surrender to sweat and to shiver with grace through it all
~kat
The summer heat has been exhausting. I sometimes wonder if it is my advancing age which makes me less tolerant, but I have never been a summer girl. Give me a cool dark corner, a fan and a good book and I am quite content to wile the hours away until dusk comes with a blessed relief to the heat of the sun.
Contrarily, in winter after the first snow, hopefully on a weekend when I have nowhere to go and can view the wonderland through the window…I’m not a real fan of long winters either.
I prefer the in between seasons. But it occurs to me as I get older that wishing away one extreme season for the other is actually wishing precious time away.
How many seasons more do I have? Definitely less than I have drudged through up to now. It has caused me to have a new appreciation for the wonders of each, however small. With little time to spare I am determined to savor every moment. But can I at least say…it is a blasted inferno out there!!! Followed by a deeply felt uggghhhh!?!!!!
Summer and I have moved on in our love-hate relationship to a mutual place of respect I think. I promise to stop saying I hate summer, and summer for its part will do its best not to give me heat stroke…at least that’s my spin on our negotiation.
they spit this word at wide-eyed apertures to the invisible throngs of loyal lemmings as if words matter
like thoughts and prayers mumbled post mass-slaughter, canned comfort facilitating a contemptible exit, accountability averted…
for, or as penance, it rolls off the tongue like salty retch but their putrid hot breath, reeking of bile, reveals their vapid souls
accountable to none impossible to hold to or for while stripping away autonomy tipping liberty’s scales drawing lines in the sand encroaching decency rendering those seeking to hold them accountable voiceless, vulnerable, voteless…
accountability is just a word
~kat
I had written this yesterday morning, tweaking it a bit, but had not managed to get photos of the most wonderful glimmers…a half dozen or so young turkeys running circles around the deer and older turkeys in my yard at the woods edge…and the emergence of an old friend…a lame doe who has wandered through for several years now, with a fawn in tow. There was also a glimmer from my youngest…a few actual snapshots of her youngest heading off to preschool!
All fine glimmers. All much needed glimmers on a foreboding day of unsettling events…our leader announcing Marshall law in essence in the capital city over a trumped up declaration of urgency employing a fantastical skewing of the facts. He is dictator itching to deploy troops to a city, a state, the country to terrorize the people into submission. I am late to posting, not because I ran out of daylight this time, but because I needed time and a few winks to make sense of it all.
There were such wonderful glimmers presenting themselves to me. They drew me in and held me…searing a memory into me that perhaps was not meant to be captured by a photograph. The young turkeys who I had feared gone, lost to predators, seem to be alive and well, full of life and joyful mischief. I hope you can imagine it. It was a delightful sight to see. And then my dear tripod doe with fawn in tow…hope, joy, resilience…relaying just a few messages, very much needed messages, to snap me back from the edge.
To witness the stunning unraveling of this country at the hands of a madman and his growing army of miscreants, with seemingly no end in sight and no one to stop them, feels like a nightmare…if only it was just a nightmare. Destruction amidst a growing number of people going through the motions of normal, working, playing, shopping, laughing feels a little crazy. It is a little crazy.
While I will have fond memories only (and no photos to burn up memory on my phone) of the visitors to my peaceful oasis…the turkey teens and the doe and her fawn, there were photos captured of my youngest grandson, full of joy, excitement and life! I’ll leave you with a glimpse of those here as a reminder. This is why we can’t give up trying…why we can’t stop fighting for justice.
so this is what it feels like to exist at a time of history repeating, to wonder who they will come for next; to resist hate in a world where kindness and compassion are revolutionary acts, where caring is a liability, where the words on my cell phone are an indictment, where it’s just a matter of time before they find me out…well… I’m not hiding…like mercury colliding… I refuse to blend into oblivion with those who sleep through this nightmare while innocents suffer… I read today, the bees are dying someone should do something, but the inconvenient truth of the matter is, someone is me, and I don’t know what to do, except to shine a light, to tell you, to tell anyone who’ll listen, the bees are dying…because I think you should know
~kat
Today’s poem speaks for itself. That said, I present to you today’s glimmer…literally, lightning in the distance and the sounds of midsummer nights in the foothills of Bramlett Mountain. Even while the world sleeps, the forest sings, for the trees perhaps? Another lesson to consider from these woods that I call home.
Today’s Glimmer: A doe and her twins under a hickory tree in the Bramlett Mountain Foothills ~kat / July 2025
switching to survival mode
I know how to survive, how to stretch a few leftovers into more how to add water to milk to make it last one day longer… when I was a girl my family lived in a motel with a kidney-shaped pool a few steps away from the interstate, from an underpass where others lived, who weren’t as fortunate as we I know where to find pennies, enough buy fast food dollar meals, how to barter for groceries, taking care of someone else’s kid so mine could eat, how to resurrect hand-me downs to clothe us, sewing squares of well-worn fabric into colorful quilts to brighten our space, oh I know…
someone told me the other day, you’ve done a lot of things in your life… I have, I smiled…I wanted to say it’s called survival, but only other survivors understand that you do the jobs no one else will do, building experience and skills to gain a few more pennies, moving from job to job, several at a time, as time sifts through your life like sand. i can make do and make work the crumbs and scraps of life, things others toss in the trash keeping us just shy of enough… it’s been decades now…decades…
I still keep a jar of spare change always at the ready just in case, I hunt for bogo sales at the market stocking my pantry with one extra I keep clothes patched and useful long after they’ve gone out of style and yet…and yet I wake each morning grateful for the sun and the rain, and this blessed life, my greatest accomplishments are my children and their children and theirs
they say the tariffs will raise the cost of living for those of us who pay to live…I’m ready, though I wish we didn’t need to be…I know how to survive in the best and the worst of times. as long as i can keep a pot of soup simmering, there will always be plenty enough to share and room for one, or two, or a few more at my table this is how we survive…together
So it is easier for you to find all the parts/chapters of my ongoing fiction series, I created a new page that lists all the links. You can check it out HERE!
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like mercury colliding... 