Comes in high-run tides in the bays and high tides of daisies. The fields are butter-and-egg fields; buttercups fill all the swales, and daisies wash up the hillside and spatter white on the sky. When the wind blows, it is pure honey for air, and all bees come home heavy and with their trousers dusted with gilt pollen. In the dawn, the woodchuck eats all the young peas. The small yellow dog digs furiously at the hole till only his hind legs are seen, but the woodchuck whistles below and sasses the dog for his trouble. Next dawn the woodchuck brings his wife and all the neighbors, and they eat all the lettuce, too.
There are five yawning mouths for the robins to put worms in over the side-porch door. The robins hop-skip along the yard and pull up angleworms as long as themselves, tip down their heads, and listen for the next one. The small boy rows his own boat out to Goose Island and back all by himself. He grows up an inch in the three hours. The ovenbirds echo hollow through the leafy woods. The qwoks cry hoarsely at their fishing all the livelong night. Beans curve up through the garden, the halves of the resurrected old beans split, and the baby bean leaves come out.
A little boy and a small dog run for running's sake by the hour, and then sleep in the warm sun curled so close together that it would take a good pair of eyes to tell which is boy, which is dog.
Now is the season of lobster stew. The lady of the house puts the children to work with hammers and breadboards, and they crack the big claws and take the meat out whole. They suck the small claws and swallow that meat as their right. They save the white blood and the green tomalley. The bowl fills slow but sure. The mother puts the lobster meat on to cook in the lobster's own juices. She puts in slabs of fresh butter, she pours in milk softly as the stew simmers on the slow fire, and she puts in cream. The family eat hot bowlsful of heaven.
The young man goes in his new shoes and his putt-putt boat over the water; the family follow in the reach boat, dressed like a Sunday on a Thursday; and there is a wedding in the little white church at the island's tip where all the windows have waves in them. The young boy takes it all in, for he feels certain he will be next. The tall new wife starts housekeeping in the cottage on the cove and burns her first johnny-cake to a cinder.
The woodchucks turn now to the late peas. Winds are all west winds or south winds, and you would think the sea was a basket of kittens, the little waves run so gentle and soft. The best flowers now take to the woods. The lady's-slipper dangles by the purple bird-on-the-wing. The dandelions are suddenly little gray-haired ghosts. The corn is the length of a man's finger, and the dangling crow's bones show like snow in his feathers.
Pinterest
