I’m thinner than I have been since I was in my early 20’s and the shade, even in early September, carries a breath of cold, but the sun on my back feels hot. The pollinators think so. They are swarming the tall coreopsis and the goldenrod in the hundreds, maybe thousands. Somewhere in the span of years, I’ve lost my childhood fear of them. I’ll stand in their midst, close to the blossoms and watch them, all frantic, all powered by that heat, pinging about, driven: honeybees, green sweat bees, paper wasps with honey brown abdomens, flower flies, carpenter bees, skippers the color of cinnamon.
I do not want to leave this little scrap of land with its gardens and its tight, warm rooms in the winter and the memories of the dogs.
