How the sun burns

We are in the full throes of summer now that we have rounded the corner of mid-summer's eve.  The days sear sun and the Earth answers in shadow.  The air hangs long and low, enveloping all that brave its embrace.  The heat invites those that remain hidden to emerge, to look for water, food, new places of protection.  We, on the other hand, the ones that can usually be found among the grass and brooks and trees, find ourselves hunkering down in the coolness of home.  We are beginning to shun the sun and its cohorts.  The summer burns hot now.  And we are more fragile than we thought.

But there are two sides to a flame.

There is life in light.  Deep, throbbing life.  It is written in the leaf of the swiss chard, with its veins of blood red crimson, spreading like a tree of life in every.single.leaf.  It is in the swelling berry that, at first, blushes scarlet but quickly grows heavy with sweetness, turning darker and richer each day.  That long, slow flare, that is what elicits this life source.


So we ignore the heat and the humidity, fan our foreheads and set up our tent.  We promised.  So we must.  And we haul in our sleeping bags that no one plans to sleep in and we carry our pillows and stuffed animals and pen lights and books.  And we settle in.  We adjust our eyes to the darkness, only to realize that the sky still glows with the memory of the day while it rocks the fingernail moon in its bosom. The locusts and the katydids and the cricket frogs hum and sing and click, laying the rhythm of night and we float on its trusted cadence.


Because to burn is to also glow.  And glowing is magical.