Autumn gives a chill before it starts to claw the gifts of Summer back so today I saw the yarrow brown and withering and the thistle gone to silk and seed I'm not sure if this was the effect of the heat or a portent of Winter coming yet the clover thrives always the first to come back after the grass is cut and the chicory mimes its own success having escaped the mower and the heat but into the tangle of green I saw a shadow pass was it perhaps a garter snake or a field mouse quietly feeling their way either way they would prefer that I had not seen them even their ghosts wraiths of a longer night and so Fall exacts her toll with hands as cold as ice only doing her job so the flowers and the trees can rest in expectation of longer days and shorter nights and the promise of better light for some reason the groundhogs stood in attention in the mound in front of their dugout facing away from the street looking at each other's backs o...

How like the beating of a heart the bass when it's played the way it's supposed to be played when you're chest is so tight and you can hear every lub dub every stick tap on the skin of the drum and when you try to take flight you fall short not of breath but because of broken wings or some other subtle pressure you sin which is the same as falling short so wrote Aristotle of phronesis in his Nichomachean and neither is the man who aims at the target an archer worth his salt unless he actually hits the mark not once or twice but all the time consistently and with a certain ease that befits a master one adept at this or that craft with technique beyond skill and practical wisdom in the fingers that lock the arrow and draw the bow he is an archer who hits the mark bull's eye through the straw and doesn't think twice about his aim or the tension on his bow or the crook of her elbow or of her knee ...