soft vanilla

      Aint it like mad crazy, an eternal kind of set up, a kind of mad crazy happiness to boot... oh it's mid-August ... and crazy with it. Like the way the air of life possesses smells that bend you... tomatoes on a platter with cheese and oil and basil... corn in a pan steamed for six minutes and then spread with butter until the mouth understands what the brain keeps talking about...  the low feel of lake water on your skin after you dry off from floating at the park and forgetting about what made the day heavy... didn't all this happen just last year?
   It's mid-August and suddenly there's need to have that knocks you about like a few steps after a few cold beers and suddenly you need to fall in love.  
   Plenty of sunlight and no humidity to speak of. Beautiful afternoon even if the forecast said iffy weather. Walked over to Park Street to a reading because it was way too attractive a day to drive in the truck. Some poems. Some food. Lots of chatter. Flowers in the ground and also perfumed out of glass jars and books to inspect and a large bowl of popcorn for everyone's hands. An airplane did barrel-rolls overhead like a noisy ridiculous insect. Motorcycles roared on the street like some big balled confusion. Lawnmowers from across neighbor's fences  crashing through personal backyards. All folded into the din of a lively Sunday afternoon. Some poems. Some food. Some beer.
   Walked back home and on the way bought an ice cream cone and watched the sunset on the lake drop down behind the old rise of the Adirondack range to the familiar west. One could do worse and I guess it's hard to go wrong walking along and watching colors in the sky and eating ice cream in the evening heat. Like all the years we spend bring us new innards. What crashed into what over those years - fingerprints on the eyelids from what we know -  easy to settle upon the paper mask mystifications we invent for ourselves as a personality that sees death as anything at all but a clarity - as the years strip us down to a thin gauze from a horror movie you're afraid to peel off -  and I thought never post handsome photos on facebook...!
   Meanwhile back at the ice cream stand!  The mandatory turbulence of two kids holding onto one another, of adolescent introspection at a take out window, each wanting something they say, but maybe different for each other they say, the way they hold hands together while deciding what to order, what do you want their whole body seems to say like a question singing out for an answer, holding hands, looking at each other, confused, so solid, settling for sprinkles, one on a cone and the other on a dish...
   Got home. Has to be the best.
                             
                                    things to do in August after cold beer

a closed spherical spacetime of zero radius
small round stones in pools of willow shade
mark shelly quotes
tomatoes in hand
why be astonished at all
treat every light as a yield    
watch an inning of baseball on television
don't even think about igloos
imagine there's a marilyn monroe apt for your phone
entertain bit player thoughts
keep in mind the word vesper and what pertains to the evening
have drunk dial questions at the ready in case someone answers
why does the world exist
should there be synchronized floating as an olympic sport
what's the unintended side effects if our memories are no larger than google