Sunday, May 28, 2006

A Carnival of Senses 

Half a long weekend in Brattleboro, and boy, are my senses tired. Here's a trifecta for each:

Sight: A flurry of white on a downtown street while a hundred morris dancers shook and rang around me like the world's cleanest street gang. Downy woodpeckers, a series of tiny hummingbirds, an iridescent indgio bunting up against the windowfeeders at my inlaw's house. The glisten of poison ivy everywhere along the banks of the everexpanding stream that cuts through their property.

Smell: Lilacs rotting on their branches. Mown grass with a hit of gas from a borrowed mower. The comforting stench of evening cowfields in the first hot humid days of summer.

Taste: Lamb's liver and moose pate at the farmer's market; rough-grained bread, green olives, and a cilantro chutney on the side. A cold blueberry yogurt soup, spicy and sweet, at brunch with old friend Dan this morning. Wolaver's Pale Ale straight out of the boat cooler, bitter and mature, drunk in the hot afternoon sun.

Touch: Cold riverwater off the speedboat bow. Wet grass against my ankles, and my tinychild's light grasp against my smallest finger as we run together through a still-dewy lawn while the rest of the family is out. My wife's knees against mine, a barstool intimacy among the latenight cacaphony of our old college microbrew haunt.

Hearing: Cassia, like the Finding Nemo seagulls, chanting mine!mine!mine! as her sister teases her with soft desirables in the back seat. Willow, serious in the rear view mirror: Daddy, from now on I wish I could be called "Willow Tree". A thousand bells, a hundred giggles, a dozen half-familiar voices, the roar of the wind as the river rushes past all around us.

posted by boyhowdy | 9:31 PM |

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