Laying foundations

Raise high the roofbeams, carpenters!

            Hymenaon, Sing the wedding song!

Up with them!

            Hymenaon, Sing the wedding song!

A bridegroom taller than Ares!

            Hymenaon, Sing the wedding song!

Taller than a tall man!

            Hymenaon, Sing the wedding song!

Superior as the singer of Lesbos—

            Hymenaon, Sing the wedding song!

—to poets of other lands.

            Hymenaon!

   

I used to read just to read. Stories went by like potato chips from a bag, leaving crumbs and a greasy ring. Sometimes it's still like that. "She'll read anything," they joked, "Even the back of a cereal box."

It was true. It is true. How can one not? Well, except that there isn't as much time. Even the quickest reader needs to show some discernment if time with books isn't going to be all junk. And maybe I'm so full of stories that my bucket is spilling over. As I move around the garden, snippets of writing, essays about gardening, thoughts and musings coalesce in my head. Carrying a voice-activated recorder would probably be smart.

But then I'd have to polish, to work, to get those essays out there.

Time be time, but it might be time to get the writing half of the reader dusted off.

Meanwhile, there are beans to plant, and bean beds to ready. Solving a problem before it's really presented, on the memory of the last time the problem showed up might be smart. And it might be work that is all for naught. I won't know if the very tall beans from last year will be better supported with a Very Tall Trellis or if I've spent an afternoon tying knots for no reason.

Not just twine and bamboo; it's soup and bean salad, green shoots pushing up through prepared soil, rough with hay and leaves, birds to thwart as they try to pull out sprouts before their time.

Calculating stresses, figuring out plans of attack, and wrestling with paragraphs that, like the beans, haven't yet manifested. If I can imagine bean plants and a harvest months from now, I can imagine an essay with polish, that says what I mean it to say. In the future.