The grass is going brown already, but I won’t water it. I hadn’t laid on it yet, on my back with the dog in the sun, afternoon wine, nothing to do, nowhere to be. Like the August we went to Italy, getting up late and taking our time getting ready for the beach, setting up shop there by an umbrella, going for lunch before the rush and ordering wine, going back to the beach for a swim, then home for a nap. Long nights, locusts in the trees and the muggy, damp palm pressing down our backs. The feeling of a place with long ago history, the middle of nowhere, a stone villa, olive trees and wild boars on the other side of the fence, in the dark, out there with the fig trees and the crunchy, gravel roads. Long nights with the windows open and the wind kicking up, the soft applause of leaves, it could be the tide scraping the shore, a million tiny whispers, gasps of air coaxing us to rest, to slumber. The trickling sounds of strings from the radio, just right. The sad, soulful song says it’s only a matter of time now, the sunset just started.

Categories: music

Tags: DPchallenge, italy, mark kozelek, Memoir, poem, poetry, postaday, prose, sun kil moon, The Red House Painters, to hell with summer, travel, Tuscany