Languor in a Summer’s Afternoon

The alphabet of
the trees

is fading in the
song of the leaves

the crossing
bars of the thin

letters that spelled
winter

and the cold
have been illumined

with
pointed green

by the rain and sun —
The strict simple

principles of
straight branches

are being modified
by pinched-out

ifs of color, devout
conditions

the smiles of love —

. . . .

until the stript
sentences

move as a woman’s
limbs under cloth

and praise from secrecy
quick with desire

love’s ascendancy
in summer —

In summer the song
sings itself

above the muffled words —

William Carlos Williams, The Botticellian Trees

It is summer here in Humptulips County, the days are hot and torpor reigns.

A few days ago, I took my afternoon tea to our front porch to drink.  As I settled into my chosen chair in the corner’s shade, I instantly became part of a universally shared, absolute stillness – no birdsong, no insect flutter, no wind, nothing to disturb the languor, nothing for me to do but drink my tea in sips and contemplate matters of the mind.

Everything from willpower to fate hung upon the cusp of late afternoon’s metamorphoses into evening.  Every living thing, sentient and non-sentient, lay motionless, lay silent, lay waiting, lay as still as circumstance and genetics allowed.

Except for the butterfly.

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