There could be thunderstorms tonight, but so far there's been no rain to cool the still air. The cicadas have begun their nightly noise. It sounds like a mass of small sleigh bells ringing madly all around, as though we were about to be visited by hundreds of demonic Santas. They will leave nettles, insects, and reindeer turds in our stockings.
I can't yet smell autumn in this air, though summer's decline is present: plain in the odor of dry grass, suggested in the hint of dustiness the damp can't conceal. Should there be thunderstorms, and a few raindrops fall, they might awaken a touch of the autumnal, by wetting the few dry leaves that have fallen. More likely, the lightning would ignite fires, and everything else would soon be overwhelmed by the smell of smoke. It's probably best if summer decays gradually, without any rain to hasten the moldering of the leaves.
Sunday Verse
By the Road to the Air Base
by Yvor Winters
The calloused grass lies hard
Against the cracking plain:
Life is a grayish stain;
The salt-marsh hems my yard.
Dry dikes rise hill on hill;
In sloughs of tidal slime
Shellfish deposit lime,
Wild seafowl creep at will.
The highway, like a beach,
Turns whiter, shadowy, dry:
Loud, pale against the sky,
The bombing planes hold speech.
Yet fruit grows on the trees;
Here scholars pause to speak;
Through gardens bare and Greek
I hear my neighbor's bees.
