Our back deck looks out on steep dropping-down place filled with July’s leafy box elders, a tangle of wild raspberries, and a mystery further below of shaded stream. The house I lived in as a very young girl had a deck that seemed enormous when I was three, and faced a huge expanse of northern New Mexican mountains. Surrounded by all that wilderness, as child I couldn’t help but wonder, What’s out there?

I haven’t thought of that deck in years, but that view was there, all that time, folded deep within me.

Here’s a summery recipe from one of my favorite poets:

Sit. Feast on your life.

From Derek Walcott’s “Love After Love”