Bittersweet days

We have entered the sweet but slightly desperate part of summer.

The days are bookended by mid-summer's antiphony of cicadas and crickets, the former's concerto beginning alone in the morning and slowly growing throughout the day, the crickets picking up a gentler saw toward evening, with katydids coming in on percussion.

Their songs are earnest and mournful, for they announce that the summer has crested, the days are shortening and the cold and more interior life will soon return. They remind us of how short and fleeting the longest and brightest of times are.

Of course there are the glories of autumn to anticipate: the symphony of leaves, the potpourri of fall fruits and vegetables, the cuddling in front of the season's first fires, warm cider, the splitting and stacking of wood for the winter.

With so much yet to do while the skies are still light til sometime past eight, it is easy to rush past the low ache of diminishing summer. But it is not good to do so.

For oddly enough, it is the ache in life's goodness that sharpens its joy; the preciousness of these moments that fuels their power.

August is the time we seem to dash about, trying to chase down and capture all the summer that got away in June and July. We seek to slow down time, or hold it still, by speeding up.

Yet sometimes - not always, but sometimes - the best way to slow down time is for us to slow down first. To sit on the porch, or the beach, or the edge of the woods with no more than a cool drink or a lover's hand in ours, and just watch. Let the words, thoughts and hours float. Three hours, from 6:00 to 9:00, will feel like a slice of eternity.

May this bittersweet time of summer - on the eve of the mournful 9th of Av and in the midst of a tragic war at home - somehow be  a harbinger of peace.