little scraps of sky

Time to look up from the sweeping, shreds of curled brown bark scattered on every surface, time to look up to see the smooth skin revealed.

Drinking coffee on the upper deck, thinking of everything that must be done, watering, cutting the cucumbers, snipping the tomatoes with blossom-end rot from their vines, you look up. Right at your shoulder, a zinnia drops a little pollen on your skin.

Yellow-faced bumble bee, Bombus vosnesenskii, diligently moving from one blossom to another to another, a tiny mask of Agamemnon in the tomato plants.

When you have finished everything else, you can sit at the pine table and make the keepsakes for an event in August, fastening little scraps of sky to paper with a single shell button and a strand of silk thread.

A blueprint for the years, using techniques the hands remember, fingers blue-stained from the work. (from Blue Portugal & Other Essays)

Your thumbs, faintly blue from the cloth this morning.