This Very Earth the Lotus Paradise

It's a June day in Vermont.
Carole and I meet in the field
between our two houses
to fly kites
and pick wild strawberries.

The sun is warm.

Everywhere we look there are
daisies, asters, buttercups,
Indian paintbrush,
black-eyed susans.

Tiny blue grapes grow in the hedgerows.

The trees are vast, leafy castles
a thousand shades of green, yellow,
purple, orange.

Tall grasses are adorned with
grasshoppers, ladybugs, butterflies.

Birds dip and fly.

The ground, too, is alive with
rabbit-holes, mole-tunnels.

Our kites fly high as we lie
on our stomachs
eating wild strawberries,
listening to locusts sing,
the hum of breezes passing through
grass and trees.

Blue sky goes on forever.