Putting stuff together for a week away. Some readings (Saturday night on Salt Spring Island, at the library in Ganges; Munro’s Books in Victoria next Wednesday), some meals and walks with friends and family, an adventure or two. I’m roasting three Japanese eggplants to toss with basil and garlic for a mezes supper tonight, along with a green olive tapenade, some figs stuffed with herbed cheese, wrapped in prosciutto, and quickly grilled. There’s a melancholy to the late September light, honeyed and golden, and something wistful about the sound of sapsuckers in the dry woods. You hear them and then, in a month, you realize how much you miss the sounds of late summer and fall. As though it passed without you noticing (because you were busy making jam, pickling beans, airing the quilts for the winter beds) and then all you notice is the silence. The frost. The long nights and how it is dark for an hour after you wake.
A postcard is proof that the flowers are still blooming, that you bent and noticed. There are roses in bud and honeysuckle tumbling over the pergola leading into the garden. Everyone I love feels very far away. I will sign this postcard in the old way: Wish you were here.
...Theresa Kishkan 