Sunday lines

1.

Was it yesterday I saw the Magritte sky as I swam at 7:30, the sun just coming over the mountain? An hour later the clouds had disappeared, the sky blue as a book of hours. But as I swam, I was pushing through cloudy reflections in the lake, turning my body under the sky, within the sky. I could have been in heaven for all I know.

2.

This morning, walking into the water, I saw a red hammock stretched between two trees at the far end of the swimming area. By my second lap, I could tell someone was sleeping in it, sleeping as I swam by. Yesterday a loon was calling. This morning the lake was quiet.

3.

I wasn’t expecting anything when I went to close up the greenhouse last evening. When I walked out the back door, one pileated woodpecker looked up briefly, then returned to drilling the base of an old stump just beyond the door. Then another stopped its work on the other side of the stump, wondering if I was trouble. I heard whining. A young woodpecker, its crest salmon on its way to red, and untidy, was perched on the cucumber box while the parents urged it to join them. Another young woodpecker whined from a nearby Douglas fir. I wasn’t expecting anything, not the brilliance of the parents, the sulky reluctance of the young to learn to feed themselves, the clear sky, the Swainson’s thrush singing nearby.

4.

Some years they are my best crop. I go out to see if watermelons are forming yet on the plant in the greenhouse and a treefrog jumps from a leaf. A treefrog falls from a rose I am deadheading to land on my arm, its tiny toe pads clinging to my skin. When I come out to move some pots in the greenhouse, a treefrog is climbing the stairs. A treefrog jumps from the comfrey I am cutting to make tea for the tomato plants, so tiny it could be a bee.