by the first of august / the invisible beetles began

Tomorrow, Tuesday, August 2, I will read poetry at the Tuesday Funk Reading Series at the Hopleaf in Andersonville at 7:30pm with writers: Tegan Jones, Eden M. Robins, Julie Rosenthal, Jerry Schwartz, and Karen Skalitzky. 

It is something like coming home in that place, a dim-lit universe of first beers with Eric, writing battles, and first mussels of the Midwest. It is a place of good friends and laughter, of coyotes in prairies in winter.

August marks a month for warmth and renewal, for orange days that never turn into evening. It is the anchor and switch, it is canoes and cicadas. It is wearing a sun hat all day. I wait all year to get here, and in two days it will be my birthday. I never worry about growing old because it's been established that happens. I worry I am not taking the time to make and build the life I want. I worry there won't be enough tea in the kitchen or pastries for everyone. I worry I may become complacent in a place that has never made me feel at ease.

August is its own namesake. It is regal. I will live alone for the remainder of it, but for the first time in two years, in September I will live with housemates again.

Anne Sexton understands why.  

I Remember
by Anne Sexton

By the first of August
the invisible beetles began
to snore and the grass was
as tough as hemp and was
no color—no more than
the sand was a color and
we had worn our bare feet
bare since the twentieth
of June and there were times
we forgot to wind up your
alarm clock and some nights
we took our gin warm and neat
from old jelly glasses while
the sun blew out of sight
like a red picture hat and
one day I tied my hair back
with a ribbon and you said
that I looked almost like
a puritan lady and what
I remember best is that
the door to your room was
the door to mine.