Dispatches From Cape Cod, Part 1

We are up in Cape Cod with my in-laws for the week. It's my first time and so far it's just perfect. Our little cottage is 2 houses in from the beach. The water is warm and very calm so Lil Pip and I are swimming around like mermaids. When we arrived on Saturday night we took a walk down to the beach at sunset and she waded in so deep her dress got wet. Five minutes later she was duck diving waves. It was like witnessing a communion with the sea. Baptism? Whatever. You get the idea.

My grandmother had a tree growing in her front yard covered in trumpet vine. Every day she'd sweep the fallen flowers off the walk.

Driveways paved with shells.

Hydrangeas! Check.

Privet hedge! My favorite summer smell.

Every house has cedar shingles. Why doesn't every town do this? There are no ugly houses.

Wildflowers by the side of the road.

Take the A Train

They used to put short poems and excerpts from classic literature up in the subway -- Poetry in Motion they called it. I read this on the ACE my freshman year at NYU and scribbled it down (before Google was so prevalent you only had to remember key words for later). It used to get stuck in my head and I'd say it over and over again. I love the sound of it. It laid dormant in my brain for many many years until it came back again a few months ago. 

God I love poetry. Good poetry that's like an all out game of tag... Just out of reach and then you catch up to it, and grab it, and its meaning is revealed to you. This one is mostly just fun to say, and that has its reasons for existing too. 

Plus, it's peach season. Go get one and honor the moment with one of the earths juiciest fruits. 

Peaches 

A mouthful of language to swallow:
stretches of beach, sweet clinches,
breaches in walls, pleached branches;
britches hauled over haunches;
hunched leeches, wrenched teachers.
What English can do: ransack
the warmth that chuckles beneath
fuzzed surfaces, sweet velvet
richness, plashy juices.
I beseech you, peach,
clench me in the sweetness
of your reaches.

-Peter Davison