A note from Hawksley.

i felt an initial unease with allowing myself to fully receive the warmth and gentleness of a perfect summer sunday. as if i were staying on guard for the surprise return of snow and cold.  summer, when successful, is a capitulation.  a handing over of the cautious and tentative self, with it’s habitually stiffened tip toeing. the body like an artist rendering.  tired and hunched in charcoal.  never bright.  never lifted.  but here i find myself in the tender caress of warm, fresh wind and evenings that take their time in turning.  blue skies that linger into night skies to play host to what we’re told are a million distant suns.  all this as the last bits of frozen ache leak away from the achilles tendons and out through the heals like an old fridge left to defrost.  the deciduous limbs undulate and milkweeds gush.  there’s latent and unseen growth of wild roses in the ditches even.  there’s a new beauty lurking wherever you choose to set your gaze.  and we begin to let go.  even as we are now more sure footed, we are too, more imbued with a willingness to dream and to let our bodies and limbs and toes be revealed in a myriad of justifiable nakednesses.  at the lake, life has made it’s rally too.  and in the wood, the glow of fireflies at dusk.  and the fox nonchalantly crosses the road with it’s tail in the air.  to speak of this all being temporary is to waste time on a deeply understood truth.  we know all of this is to be drunk in.  sipped and gulped.  savoured and sucked.  a life made easy as a reward for winter’s suffering.  this season’s charity will be siphoned like marrow from the bone. every last bead and drop.  we’ll need this memory when we’re suffering the whip and lashing of winter again.  this is our healing.  this is when we breathe slow and deep again.  this is when we submerge ourselves in ocean, lake and river and awaken that little genetic thread of the ancients.  this is nature’s benevolence come with prayers of a most bountiful and robust rhythm.  elemental and true.  this is a truly worshipful moment.  to give thanks for the sometimes forgot, but newly restored “connection”.  the light.  the water.  the soil.  the seed.  the bud.  the fruit.  the olfactory eroticism of a jostled tomato plant.  i wish you all a patiently savoured, relentlessly lovely summer.

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