several festering bugbites later, we’re back– returned from a honeyed moon like fat ham hung chilling in northern skies, radiant and happysweet. back we are from cool blueblond southern shore of that greatest lake, that lake superior, swallower of shipwrecks, tempestuous, deepy and chill dame of a lake.
back to city swelter, glass and steel upon brick and mortar, underlayment of concrete over wood over sand. the downtown morning haze glimpsed from lakeshore drive drapes heights of the civic fortress toward whose girdered and winding heart I ferry my one and only. lake michigan tosses bluegrey pony mane waves over my left shoulder as onward we funnel into streets darting with taxicabs, meticulously attired legs stepping heedless– equivalent superimposed vision: skating crowds of waterwalkers riveting liquid skin of the river, great-bodied deer leaping startled through long grass and alder saplings–here I brake to a stop before city hall and deposit him with a kiss and wish for fortitude and steer my craft onward through the stream of jittering motion.
yesterday we swam submerged and gazed upward at sun rays slanting through eyeball-freezing sweetocean water, burst to emergence shaking spray, rose up, walked out, lay down on grilling sand, sifting it, shifting its heat in ripples through fingers, baking our bodies along a shore lined with pungent pine needles, all roasting under that glorious sky-riding star that woke each day from the liquid tip of the eastern peninsula and bedded down in wet west of evening.
back am I for my part to train clatter, playground hollers, deciduous whispers of home– hauling armloads of green plant friends up a narrow back staircase (not granite, not lichen-grown) from apartment building courtyard where a neighbor has tended them, relining back deck with foliage and fragrance of herbs, city flag wafting in waves of rosemary and basil. I’ve returned to the wires and connections, to timetables and gameplans and resolve, am prompted by evidentiary beach snapshots to call a halt to ten days’ diet of snack foods and picnic fare, much as I disincline to rote gymnastic motion, as decided the determination to own my mainly capable body as fine for just what it is, glossy ladies’ mags and racketing media be damned, and shift a lifetime of staid one-piece costumes toward thrift store bikini top/jogging shorts combinations brimming with patchwork glee–still, I admit: time to lose weight– so heavy some days I would speak of it, british, in stones.
let’s call it midyear wedded resolution for best health and wellbeing– may I be so blessed with decades of dancing our temperamental tango in concert with this delicious mister. may we all be so blessed.
I {heart} Nerissa and Katryna Nields.
