Talking with friends by the side of a road, I notice a flock of Canada geese in the field across the road.

My friends tell me hunting season is just a few days away. The geese should move along.

My friends leave, too, one by one, and I linger with one woman, talking about farming in Vermont, an acquaintance we believe may have gone down the rat hole of QAnon, our elderly parents who live thousands of miles away. We branch into motherhood and gardening.

At the end of August, my youngest starts 11th grade today. The cats and I are up long before dawn this morning, the days dwindling at each end rapidly now. Next spring, with its promises of coltsfoot and trilliums seems forever away. I stand at our kitchen counter, drinking coffee, reading the New York Times.

Here’s a poem, not offered as an antidote to so many families, all over the globe, just solidarity.

Hope has holes

in its pockets. 

It leaves little

crumb trails

so that we, 

when anxious,

can follow it.

Hope’s secret: 

it doesn’t know

the destination–

it knows only

that all roads

begin with one 

foot in front

of the other.”

–Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer