lake ovenbird I take the dog and we go to the lake. She is not my dog but she is an eager companion, the sort that will offer tail wags to strangers and put her tawny chin in your hand if you so much as glance in her direction. We drive, and Eva Cassidy sings “Songbird” and the trees form a dappled tunnel and suddenly I feel so free because I can do this, I can get in the car and set out into the wilderness, and there’s no one here to stop me. From the parking lot we find the trailhead and step into the woods. The air smells like sun seared pine with a spicy hint of lignin. The dog runs ahead, but we are connected by a bright thread, and it feels, for a moment, that we are one thing instead of two, our bodies sensing the ground together, feeling our way over tree roots and keeping the glint of the lake ever on our left. The forest is deep and dark and sacred and though these are the final days of summer, I have the trail to myself. Where the day finds its way to the earth it turns the moss to emerald embers. Once I was kissed like this, with the softness of sun through cedar, with a gentle tongue brief as dew, with the almond scented sweetness of a late summer afternoon. A thing like that will change you and alter the flow of time so it will always feel like yesterday that your eyes grew wide with wonder and your breath went to live in another’s chest. 260826 what's it to you? who go blather from