Just Don’t Eat The Bugs
It is Thursday, May 25 and the thermometer
exclaims a delicious 82 degrees Fahrenheit outside.
Last year on your birthday, your son reminded you
that your age was closer to half a century than
a mere four decades, and it is almost your birthday
again. Your daughter already has her feet dug into
the job she found after earning her college degree.
You do not feel young anymore. But you have walked
successfully during your lunch break so far this week,
and there are only two more days until the long
Memorial Day weekend, and although the two hours
spent bending and digging in the garden last night
have left your back and your legs complaining today,
you didn’t like what the scale said your weight was
the last time you stepped on it, that silly winter weight
you must work off, so you grab your keys and your phone
when the clock ticks noon and you start off walking
along the blacktop road that lays in front of your office.
You have your route, the longer one that lasts 25 minutes,
that passes the gravel walkway and the lot with the horses
where you turn around after you see the penned-up
Angus cattle. On the way back, you notice the first
blue blooms of the year, three petaled flowers
that cluster between swordlike leaves that grow on
taut erect stalks, Virginia spiderwort, a name you forget
but you will have to look up later, and you will say hello
to the cluster of tiny yellow flowers with huge chinned
underbites like sweet peas and snap dragons, probably
birdsfoot trefoil, again a name you forget and have to
look up later, but as you are walking and not stopping,
not even for the lovely dried stalk of milkweed pods
sticking up on the side of the ditch from last year that
would add to your dried grass-head bouquet,
as you start to breathe a little heavier and open your mouth
to bring more oxygen to your lungs that aren’t youthful
anymore, watch out in this barely breezy almost still
air of a day, beware of the clouds of dots floating and
flying ahead of you just at the same level as your face,
don’t walk into that swarm of gnats newly emerged
from their slumber, yes look around enjoy your walk
pat yourself on the back for getting out there today,
just walk around them close your mouth
please if you would only
just
don’t eat the bugs.
5–25–23
Tansy Julie Soaring Eagle Paschold
