| I watch as an ozone-gray cloud passes over John Hardeman’s easternmost meadow off Route 199 in Red Hook. The month is April and the Dutchess County sun comes and widens over soon-to-be swaths of purple loosestrife. In a dream last night the Dutchess sun boomed and in one heave it was June and June pulled the sunflowers from Hardeman’s meadow and John’s young wife Erin drove a chrome-dented pick-up of kids down to the pond for a swim and the sunflowers flourished like life does and people came and went on bikes saying things like yes and fresh and only now am I beginning to mend from the way love sank and rabbits napped in the loosestrife and finches chirped the sunflowers into the deep cicada buzz of August. |