May we not see GodAre we to be put off and amused in this life, as it were with a mere allegory? Is not Nature, rightly read, that of which she is commonly taken to be the symbol merely?

Henry David Thoreau

NOTES FOR THE SECOND WEEK OF LATE SUMMER
THE THIRTY-EIGHTH WEEK OF THE NATURAL YEAR
     The Wild Plum Moon, new on August 9, waxes throughout the week, entering its second quarter on August 16 at 1:14 p.m. Rising in the afternoon and setting at night, this moon is at its peak in the evening.
     The Milky Way brightens the late night sky in August. Along its wide path, find Sagittarius in the south, the Summer Triangle of Deneb, Altair and Vega in the middle of the heavens, Cassiopeia to the east of the North Star and Perseus rising from the far northern horizon.

SEEING GOD
     At the end of his trip on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Henry David Thoreau challenged the metaphoric dimension of Nature: “May we not see God?” he asked. “Are we to be put off and amused in this life, as it were with a mere allegory? Is not Nature, rightly read, that of which she is commonly taken to be the symbol merely?” And, he added: “We need pray for no higher heaven than the pure senses can furnish, a purely sensuous life,” –and I add -- indulging in plants and weather, trees, the river.
     Here at the center of Late Summer, I plunge into the height of sensuality: The second crop of raspberries is getting red. Plums are sweet enough to pick for jelly. The first peach is almost ripe. Willow herb, wingstem, ironweed, wild lettuce, thin-leafed coneflower, tall coneflower, tall nettle, prickly mallow, great blue lobelia, small woodland sunflower, soft velvetleaf, and sundrops are still in bloom.
     There is a blush to my redbud tree. Windfall apples and black walnuts are down in the alley. The tree line along Dayton-Yellow Springs Road has golden edges: cottonwoods, box elders, ashes, maples starting to turn. Winterberry berries are full size, big as honeysuckle berries, foretelling autumn’s richness. Monarchs and Eastern black swallowtails and tiger swallowtails and zebra swallowtails, red admirals and browns and skippers fill the garden, indulging in the zinnias, in late Joe Pye weed and in the lanky, purple butterfly bushes.
     
The first pink stonecrop flowers opened this afternoon. The butterflies will find them tomorrow, rejecting allegory, sipping the Divine.