A new month begins, summer creeps ever onward. After a rainy morning, I felt fortunate to stand in the sun this afternoon on a creaky old dock on a pond in Morrill, surrounded by purple pickerelweed flowers waving above the water's surface and darting dragonflies. We could see little fish swimming in the shallow water around the dock. A kingfisher rattled in the distance. And after we hiked through the pines back up the trail, we finally heard a loon call--not a cry of alarm, but that simple call of a loon declaring its presence on the small, bright pond.

Now August begins.
From the lily-choked pond, loon
calls forth the new month.