July is Alive
July is a time for fireflies and campfires under the stars. A time for ripening tomatoes and strawberry season juicing itself into raspberry and blueberry season. It’s a time for gathering over huge garden salads and cold seltzer infused with lime. A time for spitting cherry pits at your friends and running barefoot through the grass in laughter. July is for hot days and cold lakes, the high hum of fields abuzz with insects, and the blessed shade of trees. July is alive.
Yes, this month brought in a heatwave, but I still love July.
How my body feels pulled to lakes and ponds and rivers. How fruit erupts and we must eat it all before the next harvest arrives and that probably means we’ll have strawberry juice on our shirts, and what a beautiful thing to be stained by a strawberry. To have sweetness cling to us, despite it all.
We are still here living, alive on this planet. And what a gift, despite it all. What a gift of possibility. I saw an NPR poll recently asking Americans if they feel the country’s best days are behind us or ahead of us. The poll was quite spilt — but I put myself in the second category. Not just because I am a mother and therefore must believe in the future, but because I have always looked to what we can create, what we can learn, what we can grow.
July is proof that the starkness of winter is not final.
Let us remember that the future is written in berry seeds and rivers. Let us gather together and dig in. Let us write poetry and let our imaginations be fruitful and generous.
Wishing you a bountiful July ~ I’ll leave you with this poem:
I love this poem so much. These closing lines are so powerful:
"What would this country be if we saw the darkness
and did not turn away
What would we see if we refused
to fill the sky with bombs?"
This is beautiful, and filled with the gorgeousness of the season, despite all the horrible stuff going on. Wishing you a happy July also