Flying Time

". . . But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near . . ."

Andrew Marvell said that "To His Coy Mistress," back in the 17 th century. He was trying to get her to go to bed with him -- kind of a male biological clock thing. But at this time of year, with garden, and book promotion, and company, and garden, and book writing, and all the other bits of living, the days, though long, don't seem to have enough hours, and I too hear the urgent rumble of that vehicle.

Time is racing now -- on every hand I see reminders of how quickly the summer is speeding by. The chicks, those little puffballs, all thriving, are a week old now and have wing feathers.

The arum dracunculus have had their moment of odiferous glory. The proud spadix and magnificent spathe are gone, leaving a bundle of green seeds that will soon ripen to cayenne red, while the deep-lobed leaves are twisting and shriveling like dead hands.

And the wrens are still with us, sleeping and growing fat while their harried parents scour our garden for bugs and caterpillars. Between the coming and going of the wrens and the warring humming birds, we have to be careful on the front porch to stay out of nature's flight paths as we rush about on our busy-ness of the day.

I think wistfully of the seemingly endless summers when I was young -- time to read to my heart's content, to ride my bike for miles along the tree-shaded sidewalks of suburban Tampa, to play kick-the-can in the fading twilight till our mothers called and we trundled home, surprised to find that it was black dark and denying it all the while.