Firefly Season
A day-late something to bid goodbye to June
Thanks for your patience in the month since my last dispatch. It’s hard to believe most days that I used to publish this newsletter every week like clockwork. Thousands and thousands of words, exhortations, big ideas. I hardly recognize that person. I’m becoming quieter as I get older, and less certain of all but the biggest things. I’m glad of that, though I’m certainly glad to have been that other version of me, too. Going forward I think you can reasonably expect that I’ll continue on this monthly schedule rather than anything close to weekly. (No hard feelings if you choose to end a paid subscription on these grounds or any other—most days my anxiety makes me regret ever opening the tip jar at all, though I am eternally grateful for what it’s brought.)
Anyway, two of my goals for this summer were to spend a lot less time on my phone and a lot more time in the garden. Well, one for two ain’t bad. Below you’ll find a poem I wrote in a recent frenzy of brain activity after a rare few hours away from screens. I hope you’ll like it.
Firefly Season
A poetry professor told me to avoid
Abstractions like love, big ones, because
What's love? Ask a hundred people
You'll hear a hundred answers, none
Particularly useful. Better
To stick to the concrete, like weeds.
Irrefutable and bent to the occasion.
But what's a weed? You loved
My salad of lambsquarter, purslane, dandelion.
Good ground cover on garden days I forget
To water, like this one, sultry (still)
Beneath the last sliver of strawberry moon.
Our pup licks salt from the crook of my knee.
I trade her too fast my peace for a piece of watermelon.
I am desperate for something I cannot name —
I think it lives inside you. Oh, one other note: I recently discovered that email replies to the newsletter were going to my spam folder, so I’ve only just noticed some extremely kind words that a few of you have shared regarding my last few dispatches. I’ll respond to those shortly—it always means the world to me to hear that my words have meant something to someone else.
Thanks, as always, for reading. I’ll talk to you next time.
-Chuck
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