A Poem for August

So already, the two Project Zero summer institutes -- The Project Zero Classroom and The Future of Learning -- are over.  As wonderful as they were -- and they completely recharged my batteries -- it's time for some serious August kicking-back.  In that spirit, here's a poem I wrote about ten years ago during an August visit to our cabin in Berlin, New York, where time is on our side, especially when the goldenrod is in bloom.

Summer

Luxurious inefficiency
beneath tangled growth of time and wood.
Productivity weighed, delayed,
achieved -- perchance--
amidst whispering branches 
and fields brimming with heat.


Afternoon ripe
with lengthening time and will.
Projects abandoned randomly, then resumed,
contemplated, completed perhaps,
arranged in rings widening
around a dreamer.

Soft pull between being and doing.
Reprieves granted freely 
when the haze descends on the hill,
when the wind nudges the tall grass,
when the sun dips toward the trees,
when what matters most is Summer.