Notes From Madoo

Wild chicory, as blue as a white bone, Pleiades, crickets like the very surf, low lamenting geese, crab grass, bottled gentians as blue as distance, and franklinia blossoms already grounded, singe on the chestnut trees, tomatoes, hot peppers, Brazilian eggplant. The birds took the blueberries. Thin atolls of cool air from the Great Lakes. Maybe farther. Chilly morning dog walks on dewy grass.

Summer was never really meant to be held or confined. It slips away. The most desired season and the swiftest. Old, exhausting laments of childhood rise up again of unfulfilled tasks, dreams, happenings. Walks not taken. Fish not caught. Mother not putting up wild green grape preserve.

Which August? Was it the one where I was supposed to paint the boathouse? The one when I swam the lake shore-to-shore and back? Got very tan? Which August was it the muskrat ate the zinnias and the cucumbers? I was to have read all of Balzac but bogged down with “La Peau de Chagrin.” The one the dear dog went rabid and had to be put down. Father tried to teach me chess. And failed. I fell in and out of love twice one August. I made a small pond where the soil seeped and a frog came out of nowhere. Badminton, waterskiing, croquet, and horseshoes.

Packed summers but over so quickly. I hated to go to sleep, stretched out on the dock and watched the stars fall. I wanted to study every aspect of August, to debone it as if it were a fish. Or press it like a flower to make it indelible. Now, all the Augusts seem to merge into one.

I last saw the lake house one August. It had grown down and was so much smaller. The old drive through the mountains seemed not as lengthy. The great swamp seemed smaller too, but was still studded with lobelia cardinalis. I couldn’t find Cox’s Chicken Farm. Our hillside had grown black with shade. I go back to those summers. Try to pry them apart.

Which summer was it I got a lady’s slipper to bloom? Got lost in the boat in a storm? Got lost in the woods? Lifted weights? Began to smoke? Made a moss garden? Hared around in cars drinking rum and Coca-Cola, singing “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered”? My brother’s new girlfriend. The one he married. Mother is reading “Kristin Lavransdatter.” A hummingbird, its beak caught in the screen. The drowning. The summer I learned about willow water. Began painting. Stopped. Began again.

Here now, this summer is coming unstuck. Pages of it. Fell in love twice. Thought to make a small moss garden. Threads or bones of all my Augusts. Is it that I exact on summer such huge expectations that any fulfillment becomes impossible? A moss garden is as frail as love. Finch are making nests.

August is the most audible of months. Would that I had its words.