1

Green grass turned golden yellow, because the sun is most intense after rain, and I'm sitting in the midst of its waving with you, the sweeping wind off the water already having dried the hilltop. It's the time of the summer when the field is only grass. Too early for sweet pea and chamomile, too late for dandelions. High summer, arcing over us like the near-full moon riding through the glare of this sky. You have the end of a stalk of new hay in your teeth as you recline on one elbow, the wind blowing your hair into a sweep that follows the cut of your jaw, your eyes squinting against the light, your skin glowing with the last of the afternoon.

I nestle down into the ground with the growing things to get away from the chill that's still in the wind, blowing, like a memory of winter in the breath of the world. The soil radiates damp heat, baking and decaying desperately during the short time it has before another freeze sets in. Behind us, the wind rushes through the trees like fingers through hair, down the lee of the hill to dissipate amongst cedar, elm, and ash.

Your eyes are fixed far away on the water moving around the point at the far west of the bay. My gaze is on your face and body, on the thoughts passing behind your eyes, the start of a curl of hair behind your ear, on the way you let your hand hang from your wrist, the way the light picks up the depth of color in you, watching for the moments when the currents of air weaving around you catch the collar of your shirt just enough to pull it back from the flesh of your neck like the ghost of a lover.

I imagine how this moment will only exist until my next breath, and then pass away into the rest of the world as if it never was, with the slant of the light just so, just like this every half-dark summer afternoon, and never to be like this again. If I ever breathe again it would be too soon.


2

I do not remember but I imagine:

The way the sky gets pinkish gray near sunset, and green grass dotted with yellow leaves, the bare black branches of the dead mountain ash outside the library window hung with changing grape vines. Night setting in too early. The house too cold, you and I in front of the stove in the studio, doing something together that doesn't require speaking, foreheads almost touching. Music in the background, something I'd been wanting to show you for a while. Later, a movie on the new TV and the new couch, and the dull happy tiredness that sets in whenever I'm there. Maybe fall asleep on your shoulder while you surf the satellite TV for something vaguely pornographic after everyone else has gone to bed. Rain in the morning, mist in the afternoon, bay like gray glass. Gunshots over the marsh because it's duck hunting season. We put on old rubber boots and go sit on the hill; this hill's last autumn, the last grass turning brown, the last leaves that'll fall from those trees. They belong to us. Whatever comes after, they're ours.

I drive you in my car out to South Fredricksburg Hall where there's a stand of trees I've always wanted to show you. They're some of the tallest in the area, and beneath them is all a lush green bed of grass and moss, dark all day. They line the banks of a stream running in from the bay, cutting a winter-wheat field in half with a wall of dark dark green. I don't know what kind they are but the way they stand there looks like an 18th century illustration. You would know exactly what i meant when I describe them that way.