The Seventh Month

"Friends, books, a garden, and

perhaps his pen . . .

Can he want occupation who has these?"

—William Cowper, The Task, 1780 

I can’t find any poems celebrating July, though I did post this one October.

My own memories are of horse shows, backyard fireworks, outdoor opera, and thunderstorms late afternoons.

Car trips from Santa Fe to Wisconsin via Hannibal Missouri, seeing Tom Sawyer’s fence.  Or to Yellowstone, fishing for lake trout, picking huckleberries.

Much later, Bastille Day in Paris for the Bicentennial (the little sausages called firecrackers grilling on street braziers; opera again, on the Swiss Basin at Versailles), digging through snowdrifts for Roman remains on the St. Bernard Pass.

This year, the friends, books, garden, and pen.  My new (fennel colored) Le Creuset grill pan, on which I can char eggplant and zucchini slices and red peppers to eat with harissa and goat cheese...or, thyme-scented fish.

Happy July.

image:  Gari Melchers, Woman Reading by a Window