Harbor Master

The painting of this corner of Menemsha coincided with my 44th birthday.
The journal entries are all about a week of blessedly warm and sunny days
after the winter that wasn’t.

I am looking back through them on a beastly late August afternoon.
A month of record breaking heat has left the yard a dust bowl.
The well demanded that we give up watering long ago
so even the heartiest of perennials have packed it in.
The trees are in shock and are falling crisply to the bare earth.

It is a soothing gift to read back about throwing the windows open for the first time this year.
The walks we took along the railroad tracks at the elementary school in muddy boots.
The dinners of salmon and fresh spring asparagus.
And, appropriately, the new fish I bought for my birthday.
Fionna Blue.

It is all in the details.
In life as in this painting that is my bliss.
The challenge of rendering each spoke on a rusty bike so that it could be lifted
from it’s nest of netting and ridden home for a catch of the day supper.
Weathered yellow slicker flapping in the breeze
heading for the Master’s safe harbor.