Friday morning Coffee Muses – there is a smell of rot in the air… a feeling that vegetation has sat too long in water. It is a smell that has been all to common this rainy year. It is the odor of life forced into overdrive… growing too much, too fast, falling into death, rotting on the ground.

Looking across the yard today felt like floating on a swamp…a feeling the smell reinforced. Brackish green below, hundreds of dragonflies skimming the surface in anticipation of a meal rising from the festering surface. A scene from a past so far back as to be remembered only on a cellular level…

The promise of the day is sweltering heat… And the cicadas are calling to it now… you can feel their spell of lassitude rising in you as you sit steaming in the man-made breeze of the ceiling fan. It is a battle for comfort that the fan is losing… sweat beads on the bare head… a sweat that cannot accomplish it’s only goal… to cool.

The sounds of summer call up memories of a youth long lost… lawn mowers in the distance, barely heard over the hum… rising and falling, asking and answering, cicadas living their summer existence… calling, ever calling, summoning the dog days of summer…

Happy Birthday America… we promise we will try not to tear you apart again…