August

The hills look old.  They are the brown of shorn grass.  Leaves become less green at this time of year.  They droop limply and heavily from the branches.  The breeze can barely summon the strength to move them.  Everything is ripe and tired and overgrown.  Wild plants are so heavy with butterflies that they cannot hold themselves up straight.  They are too tired and have thrown up their hands in surrender.

The damp rushing air smells of dry grass and ripe corn.  A gold orb of light drifts across the road ahead:  the eye of a fox in search of mice.  The moon looks like a giant toenail clipping, casually tossed.  Huge, ghostly humps of circular haystacks march across the dark fields.  When we look, they stop moving.  As soon as we look away, they creep carefully.

Katydids argue with increasing volume.  Their rhythmic chant is a soothing brain massage.  Later in the month they will make me think of new notebooks and pencils, and butterflies in the stomach before the first day of school.

A cat chases invisible beetles and toads, hopping from roadside to field and back again.  He seizes upon a locust and the sudden loud noise frightens him.  The dumb beetles hurl themselves clumsily here and there, trying to remember what they're supposed to be doing.

Glow-in-the-dark disks of Queen Anne's lace whoosh by the car windows like passing stars.  The industrial shrieking of grasshoppers becomes louder at night, almost deafening when the car passes closest to their campfires.  Every living sound and smell is magnified to penetrate my sleepiness.