June 22 2008, 11:23 PM Water Is Greedy For Down

I have known people that do not know how to tell time by an analog clock. I do not think this tragic, merely strange - the graceful arms of analog clocks are an engineering solution no longer needed in this country, passing gently into anachronism and fashion. There are, after all, plenty of digital clocks around. They are both their own cause and cure.

It has been days of stormy evenings. I have made a point to set a tuner on the shortwave to point to an empty band. In most times, the radio only reports a gentle hiss. When lightning strikes, the radio wakes, singing a crackle in perfect time with the light outside the window. The radio can find lightning farther away that I can see it. It is impressive and in some small way beautiful to hear lightning sing so. I mentioned this mechanism to a younger acquaintance, and that any AM radio would neatly do this trick, and his reply was this: "who has a radio these days?". He had a point, if not a lamentable one.

There are many rooms in the house with two doors; the kitchen is one. She left me to tend to the onions in the skillet on the stove, disappearing though a doorway into the dim hallways, eager to explore. Some minutes later I looked up to see her peeking around the frame of the other one, watching me: half of a smile, soft and shy, one pale eye, bright with light, half of a face, filled with fitness.

A peek beneath the spreading leaves of the raspberry bush this morning showed a surprising number of little fruits, still shrunk and green, tiny baubles of promise. There was, too, one singular fruit, a gentle and tempting red. It fell away with a touch into my fingers, warm. I ate it standing in the yard, with summery sun, remembering that this was what they are supposed to be.