I'm sitting on a porch at sunset in the middle of woods with a glass of white wine writing this by hand. The yat-yat bird (I've never seen it so I can't identify it) is saying yat-yat-yat. I'm sitting with my dead hummingbird friend who lies on the table next to me. The late slanted light ignites its ruby throat's irridescence. It must have hit the window and fallen to the table where it rests (it has, I think, been dead some days) next to a clump of lichen an earlier visitor placed there alongside a round granite rock the size of a baseball; all are lit in the falling rays of sun. It is a moment of insolent beauty.
A mosquito hums in my right ear, then my left. I leap up with journal and glass, beaten, the surrendered chair rocking in lost light and shadows. Already I had to evict a lizard–young alligator-type–from under the seat cushion. This is the wild west. Gold country, California.
California dreaming? No, I'm not, but you may be. You in BAP-land, New York, another time zone altogether. I am always behind. Here the sun is still settling out of the day. There (their) you have only one hour left of today. Too late to post? Perhaps a night person still prowls the web, thinks of poetry, checks here.
Hello!
-Sally Ashton