None of this distracts from the monotony of the days. We were denied our spring storms this year, and the browning of the grass lets me know that the soil regrets their lack as much as I do. The forest feels arid now, and the mountains are short of snow, and summer withers the edge of June. The persistent perfume of the jasmine as it ages takes on an unpleasant undertone reminiscent of overripe fruit. It all seems a bit funereal. What I'd like is to go walk next to the ocean, somewhere along the cool part of the coast north of the Golden Gate. What I settle for is one mixed berry flavored frozen fruit bar. The whole summer ahead, every other place too distant, I must pace myself.
Sunday Verse
My Name
by Mark Strand
Once when the lawn was a golden green
and the marbled moonlit trees rose like fresh memorials
in the scented air, and the whole countryside pulsed
with the chirr and murmur of insects, I lay in the grass,
feeling the great distances open above me, and wondered
what I would become and where I would find myself,
and though I barely existed, I felt for an instant
that the vast star-clustered sky was mine, and I heard
my name as if for the first time, heard it the way
one hears the wind or the rain, but faint and far off
as though it belonged not to me but to the silence
from which it had come and to which it would go.