Meditations under a bridge at midsummer.

August 13

August 13, 2022

The last was a melting night, and a carnival for mosquitoes.  

Could I not write meditations under a bridge at midsummer? 

Rowing home in haste before a black approaching storm from the northeast we paused under each bridge yesterday*— we who had been sweltering on the quiet waves — for the sake of a little shade and coolness, holding on by the piers with our hands. How grateful when, as I back through the bridges, the breeze of the storm blows through the piers, rippling the water and slightly cooling the sultry air! How fast the black cloud comes up and passes over my head.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 13, 1853

*To Conantum by boat, berrying, with three ladies.

Could I not write meditations under a bridge at midsummer? See May 30, 1857 (“Perhaps I could write meditations under a rock in a shower.”)

In haste before a black approaching storm. See August 9, 1851 (“I see a black cloud in the northern horizon and hear the muttering of thunder, and make haste.”)

August 13. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 13.

Rowing home in haste

before a black approaching 

storm from the northeast.

How fast the black cloud 

comes up and passes over.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2023

 

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