Flash Cuts of August

My amaryllis died, blooming once and then outgrowing its pot, cracking even plastic and pouring soil on the floor, but resurrection lilies rise like ropes dancing for a magic flute.

She sees only flash cuts of August one more bean harvest from a browning raised bed, rotating crops behind warped wood and a panting dog that looks almost as old as you. 

Not much happens in eight seconds, the time it takes to answer a phone, long enough only for almost three jars of Nutella to sell or a rider and his bull to win.

Milkweed bugs found my milkweed this year, orange and black like chocolate layered candy corn preparing pods for a promised winter under snow. 

 

Nearly three score old, she wonders if she’s like Tom Cruise or Wilfred Brimley, playing younger or older than her years, and then she stuffs three sticks of gum in her mouth and smiles.

Tearing off corn husks on the back stoop felt like birthdays in July, grandpa’s wrapped gifts from J.C. Penney, leaving silken ribbons and paper balls so light they nearly floated in the breeze.

Paper bags flatten nicely into place mats for green bean stems, piling up with a snap and a slight pop of air and that last drop of water left from yesterday’s rain.

Ground cherries disappear into their husks when they over-ripen, no soggy fermenting pulp or bare seed, just a tan skin thin and strong, empty but too firm to tear.

I tried growing snow peas planting them too late for a fall harvest to flower and vine only inches before they shriveled like the skin on my left hand, brown, dry, and spotted with age.

I threw a praying mantis into a pumpkin patch today, hoping to spare a monarch caterpillar from its snout. Once within reach, mantises strike rapidly to grasp the prey with their spiked raptorial forelegs and snap.

After digging ground cherries out of an overgrown tomato patch my face yellows spreading pollen briefly in the pepper bed before a mirror tells me “please clean!”