Vermont’s June surges in a melody of the ten thousand things madly growing .  In this fine evening, walking along my dirt road, the landscape hums with life.  On this road, I’ve also been sleeted and hailed upon.  Rain in every imaginable form — from the merest brush of mist to buckshot — has fallen on me.  Snow, of course, snow, snow, snow, in all its myriad Vermont shapes, has graced my shoulders.  But today, this very evening, right now, the air is redolent with wild roses blooming.  This is the season of lupines and iris, of daisies and forget-me-nots, and I intend to savor June in its moist and delectable sweetness.

With another Vermont novelist today, Sheila Post, we discussed landscape in Vermont writing, and this evening I am suffused with landscape, the sheer loveliness of this summer evening, this place and this time, already fleeting.

QUESTION AND ANSWER
after Li Po

You ask me
why I live on
this green mountain.

I smile: no answer.

Come.
Live here
forty years.

You’ll see.

– David Budbill