View across the stream

This is where I put the bench I got such a great discount on two years ago. 

Burley put it together for me last week. It is very soothing to sit there;

and, when I am seated and stay quiet, the ducks swim right by!

SUMMER

What amazing lightness filled your body waking on summer mornings, the generous heat still tempered in those early hours, when you'd go outdoors drunk on air, over the ground where golden shadows danced and walking seemed on the verge of becoming flight. Winged almost, like a god, you met the sky.

A full day of doing nothing awaited you: the ocean in the first hours, a lucid blue still cold after dawn; the poplar grove at noon, its friendly shad shot through with glittering light; the back streets as the afternoon wore on, strolling down to the port until you found a little cafe to sit in. Such marvelous idleness, thanks to which you were able to live your time, the moment completely present, whole and without regrets.

A few jasmine or spikenard flowers, placed on your pillow to freshen the night, brought back the memory of the kids who sold them, the bouquets strung on prickly pear leaves, the vendors no less delicate, nor their brown skin less smooth, than the petals of the flower watching over your sheep. And you fell into the darkness with a pleasure equal to the one you felt when giving yourself to the light, the whole perfect day settling over you gently as a folded wing.

Luis Cernuda

Translated by Stephen Kessler

Written in Water; the Prose Poems of Luis Cernuda,

City Lights Books, 2004, page 58

Although we may not have lived near the ocean, or where spikenard flowers grew, there is in memories of childhood, places and weather, other people, another paragraph that you could write.
Send it to me!