Welcome! I’m delighted to be hosting the Poetry Friday Roundup this week!

After a few years of exciting travel and busy summers, and a hectic start to this one, I’m now enjoying a slow-flowing summer. I’m embracing and embodying words like putter, meander, wander, roam. I’ve done more than my fair share of digressing and side-tracking. And then there’s that delightful French verb, flâner, which means, essentially, to wander about with an engaged and inquisitive eye, but no destination in mind. I like to think of it as being open to everything, but with no agenda. Now, that’s a summer plan!

One of my favorite things to do this summer has been to follow the pollinators around my gardens and take pictures. It’s made for a lovely pace.

As the calendar flipped to August this week, I started thinking even more about pace. I confess, I have a propensity to hurry and rush. Too often I let the pace rev up to frantic, especially once the school year starts. I’m not sure how to stop this from happening (yet!). As I’ve been thinking about all the impending rush and scurry, this poem has been in my mind.

Hurry
by Marie Howe

We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store   
and the gas station and the green market and   
Hurry up honey, I say, hurry,   
as she runs along two or three steps behind me   
her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down.   

Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave?   
To mine? Where one day she might stand all grown?  
(To read the the remainder of the poem, click here.)

Those first two lines of the second stanza are playing on repeat in my mind: “Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave?/ To mine?”

So, I’m deliberately pushing pause while I can. Avoiding making too many plans. Cancelling or reorganizing them when I realize I have done so. I’ve taken more and longer naps this summer than I have in my entire life, and I’ll try to tuck in a few more. (The hammock and I have become good friends.) These days, when I think of running errands, I’m pausing to ask myself, “Do I want to do this right now? Do I need to do this right now?” More often than not, the answer to both of those question is: I don’t. It can wait.

Today as I lay in the hammock, I hear the bees buzzing about the hosta blossoms. I hear their sound ebb and flow, muffled by petals as they enter each soft chamber. My eyes trace the undulating path of a swallowtail butterfly. A pileated woodpecker swoops directly overhead to land momentarily on an adjacent tree. I watch it move up and down, hear it’s beak thunk into the trunk of wood, see it’s wings unfold as it flies away and listen to its ululating cry. I watch the shadows shape shift in the leafy canopy. I close my eyes and try to imprint the moment.

Summer is ending… but it has not yet ended.

Summer Mantra

May I be present in moment’s glow,
resist directing its ebb and flow,

relax into the day’s embrace,
let buzzing bees decide my pace.

May my eyes drift with monarch’s flight
and revel in day’s changing light.

May I gauge time by shadow’s reach
or tidal rhythms at the beach.

While clocks and phones sit idly by,
may I unwind with heartfelt sigh,

and coalesce with present space.
The gift of now can’t be replaced.

©Molly Hogan

And now I find myself humming this song…

“Let the morningtime drop all its petals on me….” Ahhhhhh…

Wishing you a wonderful late summer and sweet, smooth, flowing days. Please add your link below to join this week’s Roundup.

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