The summer has caught me up in its tangled strings.  Throughout the day, ideas for my gratitude list pop into my head.  I try to grab and secure them, but someone has left the lid off the pot while making this batch of popcorn, and they zing away before I can grasp them.

I’m not too fussed about it.  This is the nature of summer.  As the cooler weather returns and daily demands of the farm settle into more predictable rhythms, I’ll get the lid back on that wanton kettle of my brain.

Perhaps I have written this before: My friend Sarah and I have talked about how perhaps something about the gratitude list ought to be a little difficult, how for those of us who live fairly closely with the natural world, it would be pretty easy to rattle off a list of five natural things every day, and this might defeat the purpose a little.  This is a temptation for me.  On the other hand, I want my gratitude lists, like poetry, to carry several layers of meaning, as I hope this one will.

Gratitude List:
1.  Hummingbird: Yesterday when I came down from harvest, I let myself drop underneath the poplar tree.  I lay there watching the sun glowing through the pollen-golden wings of a tiger swallowtail wandering among the leaves, when suddenly there she was, wings a-blur in a patch of blue between the branches.  I don’t think I’ve ever observed a hummer in flight from directly below before.  She was a double fan of pure motion and light.  A lemniscate.  No wonder the Hopi and Navajo see her as the messenger between the worlds.  If I see her again today, what message shall I send?
2.  Toad: Yesterday I was with a crew harvesting tomatoes, while Holly and Mary Jo were picking squash.  Suddenly, Holly started to whoop and holler.  A few moments later, as we were loading our tomato bins into the back of the truck, Holly came over, her hands cupped together.  I thought she was wringing out a wet rag: water was streaming from between her fingers.  Instead, she was gently holding the largest toad I have ever seen, and it was performing its natural response to being picked up by a human.  I’m still a little stunned that it could hold that much liquid inside it.  Toads have been a watchful presence in my writing this past winter, so it felt like a doubly good omen.
3.  Pears: Driving the tractor down the hill, I noticed the pears shaping up beautifully on the trees in the orchard.   I can almost taste them.
4.  Tomatoes: Tomatoes satisfy on so many levels.  I have my first six quarts of 2013 sauce on the counter ready to go to the basement shelves for the season.  Fresh salsa with cilantro and lime and hot peppers.  But right now, the thing I love so much is the wanton variety of their shapes and colors when you put them in a bin together.  I didn’t get a shot of yesterday’s bins, but the one attached to this post looks almost the same.
5.  Rilke:  “I am circling around God, around the ancient tower, and I have been circling for a thousand years, and I still don’t know if I am a falcon, or a storm, or a great song.”  Rob Breszny challenged his readers to write their own permutation.  Here’s mine: ” I am circling around the Core, around the Source, and I have been circling since my thousand times began, and I still do not know whether I am a watchful toad, or a wordless prayer, or a cool wind above the fields.”

May we walk in beauty.