Indian Summer

Indian Summer 8/31

                And I drive

Pass the prison where they are building an annex where they have an electric chair and where the lights would dim when they used that chair

The air is perfectly transparent we are light as a feather and the clouds are pure and the sky is severe and the mountains burn green

                And I drive

To the graveyard in Zion where my grandmother is buried and I do not remember where her stone is but I manage to find it immediately

As heavy as the weather if it was raining stones and I'm not sure what I feel as I brush the dead grass form the edges of the tomb stone

That word tomb from Middle English tombe from Anglo-French tumbe from Late Latin tumba which is a sepulchral mound

In Latin tumēre means swollen

As in the mound of fresh earth the faces sitting around the hole at the funeral the earth on this post hurricane August day

First used in the 13th century

                And I drive

To the wall of names in another graveyard

I stumble across the marker of my grandfather and cannot find my mother's mother and I feel like a terrible person because I do not feel anything looking at these markers

I feel more staring into the trees and hearing the cicadas

                And I drive

The air is crisp and cool and the apples will be coming in soon that pop as your teeth hit the flesh and that sweet first taste

It hits and the flesh is pearl and water and the clarity is obscene I do not have that sort of clarity

Break the clouds against the mountain and they pile before spilling down the next slope into the valley

As I pass the new buildings and the old abandoned ones I think that I cannot possibly understand this enough to feel anything worth feeling

The stone was rough and cool and covered with fake flowers and dried grass clippings and I said out loud

I wanted more for you and I was not sure who I was talking to

                And I drive